Verge: Studies in Global Asias - Vol. 6.1: Displaced Subjects: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Critical Refugee Studies
Edited by Tina Chen (Penn State) and Cathy Schlund-Vials (University of CT-Storrs)
This special issue – focused on global human rights and international humanitarianism – is from the outset guided by what sociologist/cultural critic Yên Lê Espiritu has productively characterized as a connected and connective frame of academic inquiry: critical refugee studies. As Espiritu’s strategic nomenclature suggests, “critical refugee studies” takes seriously displaced subjectivity, nationless bodies, and statelessness. The layered contemplation of critical refugee studies deliberately moves beyond the acknowledgement of stateless figures and nationless subjects to methodologically engage what Espiritu has concomitantly defined as integral to this emergent interdiscipline: critical juxtapositioning. Such comparative analyses, which anticipate this issue’s contents and themes, encompass a dialogic situating of ostensibly opposing disciplines (for instance, sociology, education, performance studies, and literature) and seemingly incompatible spaces (for example, military bases, libraries, art galleries, digital platforms, activist workshops, and secondary education classrooms). In so doing, contributors will collectively address the wide-ranging conditions which brought such displaced subjects “into being.”
Equally significantly, these “before” assessments make necessary multivalent and multidisciplinary explorations of wartime aftermaths, which… read more