Spring 2022
Islands as Metaphor and Method
Islands have captured our imagination and entered the repertoire of human practices in numerous ways: as philosophical concepts, utopias, commercial and cultural entrepots, paradise getaways, high-security prisons, testing grounds, overseas colonies, spaces to quarantine the sick, and havens for shipwrecks and refugees. Islands function as physical spaces and metaphorical representations of the dialectic between belonging and exclusion, alterity and relationality, center and periphery, confinement and trespassing, archaism and transformation. Some islands have disappeared or been made invisible, their populations decimated or marginalized, while others continue to resist various pressures, from (neo)imperial imposition and integrationist policies to the effects of climate change. Still others have been artificially constructed as private assets or for government profit. Challenging the tendency to view the world as a mosaic of continents, scholars, artists and activists have been turning to islands as microcosms and catalysts of preservation, restoration, and coexistence. There has been a growing tendency to link the experiences, sensibilities, views, and worldviews of islanders—to extend Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation, initially conceived with the Caribbean in mind—to the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and beyond. As islands materialize the intersection of cultures, languages, and societies, they demand a parallel interaction between disciplines and an archipelago of methodological approaches. How do these cultural, social, and linguistic intersections form? How are they formalized? In what ways are islands ideal harbors for the interaction of different disciplines? We welcome archipelagic reflections on islands as spaces, concepts, and methods.
Lectures
All lectures begin at 6 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Locations vary by date.