This event includes a screening of Borderstory, a 24-minute film on the word ‘border,’ followed by a discussion of its production process as a form of research creation.
Humanitarian communication is notorious for shaping a popular imaginary around refugee ethics that dehistoricizes the cultural figure of the refugee and focuses on charitable, ameliorative action rather than on understanding the root causes of displacement. One contributing factor is that refugee discourse, as a set of terms, concepts, and norms produced by the international refugee regime and its actors, most commonly traces its roots back only to WWII and the establishment of the UN Refugee Convention in 1951. My research project, Worn Words, takes ordinary words in refugee discourse and renarrates them through an experimental narrative media-making praxis, using animation and cross-sector, interdisciplinary interviews to lengthen and broaden the context for these words. Borderstory, one of the media outputs for Worn Words, uses the genre of fairytale to produce a dehistoricized understanding of the word ‘border’ and then employs postcolonial filmmaking strategies to interrupt and re-contextualize it. Considering the process of creating the film opens up significant questions about narrative forms and their relationship to refugee discourse.
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
12-1 PM PST
Online
This event is co-hosted by the UBC Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster and Public Humanities Hub.
Erin Goheen Glanville (PhD McMaster) is a sessional instructor in the Coordinated Arts Program and English Department at UBC. Dr Glanville’s research studies the role of imaginative narratives in interdisciplinary forced migration studies, with a particular focus on refugee claimants and migrant detainees. Her community-engaged research, including a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Communications (2017-2019), develops a cultural refugee studies approach to narrative media making and pedagogy. Borderstory, one of the project’s media outputs, can be found at https://vimeo.com/427545591. Dr Glanville also serves on the Board of Directors for Kinbrace Community Society.