The Eisenberg Institute will kick off its 2024-25 program with a new theme, “Home and Exile,” and a talk on September 12, 2024, by historian Angela D. Dillard (University of Michigan).
“Issues surrounding home and exile loom large at the current moment, whether we are considering the displacements and migrations of people or non-human organisms in the face of political upheavals, economic inequalities, interpersonal conflicts, or climate transformations,” said John Carson, director of the Eisenberg Institute.
“While often thought of as opposites, in this series of programs we want to explore not just the tensions but also the intimate connections between home and exile, and the ways in which each can signal either promise or peril,” said Carson. “We invite the entire Eisenberg community to join the conversation.”
Click the dates below to link to the event calendar entry to learn more about each event. Additional information—including titles, panelists, and abstracts—will be posted when available. See below for the full "Home and Exile" theme statement.
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Fall 2024 Events
September 12 • 4 pm • Lecture
A Different Shade of Freedom: Civil Rights, Wide History, and the Post-WWII Transformation of Black Conservatism in America
Angela D. Dillard (University of Michigan)
September 20 • 12 pm • Symposium
Home and Exile: Exploring a New Theme
Hakem Al-Rustom, Jennifer Dominique Jones, Sanne Ravensbergen, John Carson (moderator)
September 26 • 4 pm • Lecture
The Ethics of Blessed Entertainment: The Visual and Affective Fundraising Strategies of German Humanitarianism on Behalf of Ottoman Armenians (1890-1930)
Melanie S. Tanielian (University of Michigan)
October 10 • 4 pm • Lecture
Dams that Save: Law, Beavers, and the Making of the Yukon River
Bathsheba Demuth (Brown University)
October 11 • 12 pm • Graduate Student Workshop
Scales of Movement: Beyond Humans and the Problem of Agency
Amy Kuritzky, Ismael Pardo, Qingyi Zeng, Yipeng Zhou, Douglas Northtop (moderator)
November 15 • 9 am • Symposium
The Modernist Wish: Europe in the Twentieth Century
Anne Berg, Ismael Biyashev, Monica Black, Kathleen Canning, Deborah Field, Lucy Hartley, Tracie M. Matysik, Roberta Pergher, Lewis Siegelbaum, Scott Spector, Johannes von Moltke
Winter 2025 Events
January 16 • 4 pm • Lecture
Between Home and Exile: Binational Living and Longing at the US-Mexico Border
Larisa L. Veloz (University of Texas El Paso)
January 17 • 12 pm • Graduate Student Workshop
Challenging Gender in Labor and Migration
Amelia Burke, Cassandra Euphrat Weston, Daniel Jin, David Tamayo (moderator)
January 30 • 4 pm • Lecture
Divergent Connections: Participating the Indian Ocean World from East Africa’s Interior, ca. 1000-1800
David Bresnahan (University of Utah)
January 31 • 12 pm • Graduate Student Workshop
Home and Exile: Reframing Global Connections and Encounters
Nicole Allora, Christopher DeCou, Allen Kendall, InHae Yap, Derek Peterson (moderator)
February 27 • 4 pm • Lecture
Beyond Affirmative Action: What Roman Identity Politics Can Teach the US
Nandini Pandey (Johns Hopkins University)
February 28 • 12 pm • Graduate Student Workshop
Exile as Erasure: Reflections on Marginality
Tuğçe Akgül, Melissa Itzkowitz, Zhaina Meirkhan, Talitha Pam, Anna Bonnell Freidin (moderator)
March 20 • 4 pm • Lecture
Broken Bonds: Fugitive Bannermen, Civic Virtue, and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China
Pär Cassel (University of Michigan)
March 27-28 • Symposium
Silences Broken, Silences Kept
April 3 • 4 pm • Lecture
Foreigners in Their Own Land: Chernobyl under the Russian Occupation (2022)
Serhii Plokhii (Harvard University)
April 4 • 12 pm • Graduate Student Workshop
Towards a Decolonial Methodology
Chandrica Barua, Azhar Dyussekenova, Keanu M. Heydari, Sara Ruiz, Sikandar Kumar (moderator)
"Home and Exile" Theme Description
Home conjures places of refuge or belonging, habitats that sustain and nurture. Exile, by contrast evokes images of loss or separation, a place of alienation where survival is a struggle. And yet, home can also be a site of danger and exile a sign of defiance or a place of freedom. Home and exile are key to the concepts of economy and ecology, both of which challenge historians to examine the forms of knowledge, norms, and gendered and material practices that shape landscapes of membership and exclusion, through social and interspecies engagements. This year’s Eisenberg theme invites historians to question distinctions between the private and the public, and to investigate the tensions between freedom and coercion.
In this series of lectures and workshops, the Eisenberg Institute invites contributions that explore not just the differences between home and exile, but also their intimate connections and intersections, whether in the realm of the personal, political, material, religious, or environmental. We hope to investigate some of the many forms of historical change that happen at the intersection of home and exile, moments and places where identities are forged, political power is exerted, ecologies are reconfigured, and lives are remade. We invite contributions that span geographic and temporal boundaries and that encourage us to rethink our presumptions about these seemingly antithetical concepts.
