Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network (MDCSN)
'Migration of Ideas, Sounds, Images'
Convenors: Nuria Triana Toríbio, Rajinder Dudrah
This thematic group is concerned with exploring the local-global nexus and movement of ideas, sounds and images which circulate in local places, but have attachments to local, regional, national and transnational places. The construction of diasporic communities through sonic landscapes (music), visual tropes (transnational cinema and visual culture), and through ideas about migration will be key in formulating new theoretical and methodological considerations about late modern diasporic formations. This strand is equally interested in the articulated processes of local place(s) and space(s) being formed by global flows and also how global flows are shaped and constituted from within local place(s) and space(s).
'Transnational Cinema' is an important dimension of this theme, focusing on the trans-Atlantic and trans-European traffic of films and film makers. In a dual framework of transcultural studies and the theorisation of sexualities, we analyse the circulation of actors and directors, national differences in the training of actors of new global tastes. We explore questions of the 'translation of desire' not only by tracing the cultural traffic as above but through case studies on queer audiences across borders.