2023-2024 Academic Catalog

Jun 01, 2024

2023-2024 Academic Catalog

HIST 266 - Refugees

Debates about the “Refugee Question” have shaped government policies and people’s lives throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our course will examine the history of refugees and displaced peoples to, from, and within Europe. Through readings of fiction, memoir, art, film, and contemporary scholarship, students will explore: (1) the creation of stateless peoples through war, genocide, and population transfer; (2) the evolution of ”refugee” as a legal category; (3) the experiences of stateless and displaced peoples, including forced removal, transit, encounters with new homes, and nostalgia for the places they left behind; and (4) the long-term consequences of forced migration for the segments of the population who remain settled and experience the absence of those peoples who were forced to flee. Each of these areas of interest has global and present-day reverberations for ongoing discussions of migration, borders, and diversity in Europe, the United States, and beyond.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered pBi-annuallyeriodically