A2. Refugees' Stories, Anthropological Perspectives

This is a cultural anthropology course about the stories that refugees tell about their lives as forced migrants and about the various narratives that others tell about refugees. So, our class is as much an anthropology of literature course as it is a class about refugees in Worcester and beyond. We’ll consider fictionalized childhood memoirs, graphic novels, short stories, young adult literature texts, journalism, creative nonfiction, and a digital archive written recently (about refugee artisans in Worcester). Each format tells different stories about forced migrants. We’ll explore anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s classic study of Cambodian refugee resettlement in California (her book Buddha Is Hiding) as our theory touchstone for savoring and analyzing these diverse texts.

Required Book:  Accidental Sisters: Refugee Women Struggling Together for a New American Dream, by Kimberly Meyer, 2024. University of California Press, ISBN 13 978-0520384675. ISBN 10:0520384679. (the paperback version)

All other texts will be available as pdf’s on the WISE website Course Materials page.

Susan Rogers is an Emerita Prof. (Holy Cross) and is a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D., 1978, U of Chicago) currently doing research on refugee resettlement in Worcester, MA. Her earlier work concerns the politics and aesthetics of Angkola Batak literature and village arts, in relation to state power in the colonial Indies and in modern-day Indonesia. She taught anthropology and Asian Studies at Holy Cross from 1989-2016 and before that, from 1978-1989 at Ohio U., and taught a version of this course at Holy Cross in 2019. Many of her publications and grants (e.g., from National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright) focus on analysis of literature from Indonesia, especially by writers from the Angkola Batak minority society.