Exploring Diaspora Through the Arts

An event to explore and display the role of the arts in understanding, expressing and experiencing diaspora

I am part of team at Oxford Diasporas Programme organizing an event exploring diasporas through the arts. Please note that we are accepting artist submissions until July 31, 2014, and the event will be held at The Old Fire Station in Oxford on November 1, 2014.

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The arts have served as a platform for the creation, expression, and negotiation of diasporic experiences across generations and geographies. The term ‘diaspora’ emerges from the literary world, and many of the key thinkers in diaspora studies have looked to the arts as a source of inspiration, insight and information. In fact, artistic mediums of expression are often flexible enough to engage with and articulate the complexity and fluidity of diasporic experiences.

Exploring Diaspora through the Arts, supported by the Oxford Diasporas Programme and hosted by The Old Fire Station, aims to bring together artists, scholars, students and the general public to explore aesthetic manifestations and representations of diasporas, and reflect on what the arts contribute to diaspora studies.

Call for Artists
Submissions are sought which shed light on a range of perspectives on, and diverse experiences of, diasporas across the globe. Among the themes to be explored are: the formation and maintenance of diasporas; cultural, social, economic and political impacts and experiences; processes of inclusion and exclusion; adaptation and change; the politics of diaspora and art; aesthetic representations of diasporas; myth and diasporic memory; processes of identification and dis-identification; belonging, longing and nostalgia; diasporas and historical change; diaspora and religion; and narrating and experiencing diaspora.

For more information and to download the Call for Artists and Application Form please visit: http://www.migration.ox.ac.uk/odp/through-the-arts.shtml