What We Brought with Us

If your government made you afraid to stay in your home and you had to leave, what would you take? What would that thing come to mean to you and what story would you want it to tell others?

In exile and migration, the things that forcibly displaced people take with them become mobile testimonies of defiance, mourning, creativity, and rejuvenation. Through a series of scholarly essays and autobiographical vignettes, this richly illustrated volume draws on such observations to examine the meanings that possessions assume when they are wrenched from their original contexts. The contributors to this collection shine an intimate spotlight on those who are driven from their homes by conflict and forced into exile by authoritarian regimes. In so doing, the contributors underscore the necessity for civil societies to support academic freedom and the work done by critical thinkers worldwide.

Auteur
Vanessa Agnew is a Professor in the Cultural Studies Faculty at Technische Universität Dortmund and is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. She did a PhD in European studies at the University of Wales, and was tenured in German studies at the University of Michigan. She is Associate Director of Academy in Exile, which supports scholars and cultural producers who have been forced to flee their home countries by authoritarian governments. Her research deals with forced migration, genocide, memory and commemoration, historical reenactment, music history, and ecology.