The century stretching from the end of World War I to the present has seen an explosion in mobility and migration. The post-World War I order—persistent outbreaks of violence, and shifting European and Middle Eastern borders and boundaries—created what Hannah Arendt called “the problem of the stateless people.” The rise of the Nazis and other fascist movements in the 1930s led to a groundswell of emigrants and exiles, and both the Nazis’ genocidal war and post-World War II upheavals and persecutions further exacerbated the crises. In the past decade, the number of forcibly displaced persons has exceeded those of the years around World War II. If the European migrant crisis has served as the main sounding board for current discourses around migration, it is far from the only epicenter of global migration.

What can the history of forced displacement teach us about the current moment? How, in turn, does a history of the present alter our understanding of the past? And given the persistence of the problem of statelessness, is “crisis” the best framework to speak of migrants and refugees? Indeed the multidirectional patterns of so-called economic migration, too, intersect with the histories of imperialism, nationalism, and fascism in often-unpredictable ways, putting pressure on prevailing notions of “forced” versus “voluntary” displacement.

With a broad historical and geographic lens, the Exile and Resistance lecture series examines the overlapping trajectories of exile, migration, and statelessness over the last century, shedding light on experiences and representations of displacement, loss, and persecution and highlighting sites of political and cultural resistance. The series will bring together scholars, artists, and activists for ongoing interdisciplinary presentations and discussions around recent research, films/ documentaries, and artistic pieces that focus on the subjects of exile and resistance in historical as well as contemporary contexts and in a multitude of geographical regions.

Inspired by USC Libraries’ exile studies collections, which include the papers of German-Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, Exile and Resistance is the result of a joint partnership between USC Libraries, USC Max Kade Institute for Austrian–German–Swiss Studies, and USC Dornsife Department of French and Italian.

Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet born in Damascus, Syria, and emigrated to Sweden in 2008. Now he lives in Berlin. He has published four poetry collections in Arabic and his work has been translated into dozens of languages. Ghayath Almadhoun collaborated with other poets and artists and his poetry has been part of work by US artist Jenny Holzer and German musician Blixa Bargeld, and others. His latest collection Adrenalin, published in English by Action Books 2017, was among SPD Poetry Bestsellers in the US, and was nominated for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. His selected poems Ein Raubtier namens Mittelmeer (Predator called the Mediterranean), Arche Verlag, 2018, ranked top of the Litprom-Bestenliste 2018 of best books translated into German.

Lan Duong is Associate Professor in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism (Temple University Press, 2012). Dr. Duong’s second book project, Transnational Vietnamese Cinemas and the Archives of Memory, examines Vietnamese cinema from its inception to the present day. Her research interests include feminist film theory, postcolonial literature, and Asian/American film and literature. She has coedited an award-winning anthology called Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders in Literature and Art (University of Washington Press, 2013). Duong is a Founding Member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. She currently serves as the website editor for the group (www.criticalrefugeestudies.com) and is co-editor for the series, Critical Refugee Studies, at the University of California Press.

The Student Council consists of a team of highly engaged, talented, and diverse high school, undergraduate, and graduate students who invite prominent guest speakers to discuss topics relating to art, culture, politics, and society. In conversation with visual artists, musicians, dancers, writers, theater and filmmakers, cultural critics, curators and others, the students will explore how the arts can make a difference in times of social and political crisis; on what social issues they can give new impulses; how they can help shape local communities; and how the alleged freedom and autonomy of the arts might impede or help the arts in terms of social and political significance.

The guest speaker for our April program is Heidi Duckler, Founder and Artistic Director of Heidi Duckler Dance in Los Angeles, CA, the pioneer of site-specific place-based contemporary practice. Titled the “reigning queen of site-specific performance” by the LA Times, Duckler has been awarded the Distinguished Dance Alumna award from the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, the Dance/USA and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Engaging Dance Audiences award, and the National Endowment of the Arts American Masterpiece award. Duckler has created more than 500 dance pieces all over the world and she is currently on faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Film and Media Studies Department.

Ghayath Almadhoun formulates his project at the Thomas Mann House as follows: "In my new book of poetry, I will use my writing as a diary to survive, as a therapy to heal the inner wound, and will translate into poetry the reality in which I suddenly find myself. I will search for the origins of my double exile, a stateless child born in Damascus and forced to flee from Syrian exile to a Western one. In this double exile, I will write down the paradox of this new life through mirroring memories. I am no longer Middle Eastern, nor will I ever be 100% Western. I am a new species coming out of exile and living in the parallel. I am becoming the parallel. Berlin is a place where I have my own imaginary Marshall Plan to rebuild Damascus in my imagination.”

Ghayath Almadhoun will present and discuss his work at the University of California, Irvine.