&NOW 2018

There is much debate right now about what is or is not owed to and by migrating people attempting to cross borders. We ask, do they have documents? Do they deserve to have documents? What are their reasons? Can they voice their reasons in English? We ask that foreign bodies daring to move closer to us be fully legible (but audible only on our terms). Be willing, ultimately, to be subsumed by a body that is both larger and more narrowly defined.

But our apprehensions about and barriers against Other bodies do not as effectively block other movements. Texts and tongues, too, are bound by sociocultural, political and historical conditions. Nevertheless, they are often able to travel more fluidly and insistently through unfamiliar, unforgiving terrain. What can we learn from their migrations? How might we extend textual multiplicity and lingual elasticity to accommodate migrating entities? Can we document, can we speak and reason in ways that do not strand us or others in places that are hostile and diminishing?

The five women writers and translators on the panel will explore these questions and more, drawing in part on their own work and experiences of migrating. The panelists may be labeled German, Indian, Iranian, and Ugandan, but they live transnationally and multilingually. They write in and of liminal spaces, in and of mutable words, forms and identities. Through their diverse critical and creative approaches, they hope to establish and support wider, better practices of migration and inclusion.