Multiple Belongings: Diaspora and Transnational Homes - Second Annual Histories of Home SSN Conference
The Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network (SSN) invites papers for its second annual conference, to be held in London at the British Library on Friday 21 May 2010.
The conference will examine migrants’ homes across the globe from early civilisations to the present. We are particularly interested in the material aspects of setting up home in another country, such as room layouts, furnishings and other possessions and how these are adapted, integrated or negotiated between host nation and place of origin.
We are also keen to explore the meanings associated with the material culture of transnational homes. What is home? Where is home? Where and when do we “feel at home”? What is the relationship between home(s) and identity formation?
Themes for papers might include:
- home, homeland and displacement
- transplanted or adapted home interiors
- colonial and postcolonial homes
- transnational family and friendship networks
- eating practices, culinary journeys, fusion food
- the meaning of “home” for different generations living in diaspora
- temporary, permanent and unintentionally permanent settlement
- transnational migrants living and working across several countries and the role of
- web-based technologies in maintaining family relationships
- migrants and domestic work
- imaginary and invented homes: writing diaspora and cinematic representations
- documenting, collecting and exhibiting the transnational home
