Representations of War, Migration, and Refugeehood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

War, migration, and refugeehood are inextricably linked and the complex nature of all three phenomena offers profound opportunities for representation and misrepresentation. This volume brings together international contributors and practitioners from a wide range of fields, practices, and backgrounds to explore and problematize textual and visual inscriptions of war and migration in the arts, the media, and in academic, public, and political discourses.

The essays in this collection address the academic and political interest in representations of the migrant and the refugee, and examine the constructed nature of categories and concepts such as ‘war,’ ‘refuge(e),’ ‘victim,’ ‘border,’ ‘home,’ ‘non-place,’ and ‘dis/location.’ Contributing authors engage with some of the most pressing questions surrounding war, migration, and refugeehood as well as with the ways in which war and its multifarious effects and repercussions in society are being framed, propagated, glorified, or contested.

This volume initiates an interdisciplinary debate which re-evaluates the relationship between war, migration, and refugeehood and their representations.

Daniel H. Rellstab teaches linguistics, intercultural communication and semiotics at the University of Vaasa, Finland. He authored a study on Charles S. Peirce and wrote on language and identity in multilingual contexts. Recently, he co-edited Dialog und (Inter-)Kulturalität. Theorien, Konzepte, empirische Befunde (with Simon Meier and Gesine L. Schiewer, 2014).

Christiane Schlote teaches drama and postcolonial literatures at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is the author of Bridging Cultures: Latino- und asiatisch-amerikanisches in New York (1997) and co-editor of New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama (with Peter Zenzinger, 2003) and Constructing Media Reality. The New Documentarism (with Eckart Voigts-Virchow, 2008).