Reflect and Reexamine
An Odyssey to Nowhere: Migrants as the Epitome of Eternal Wanderers in Contemporary Migrant Literature View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christine Anton
The story of the ‘Eternal Wanderer’ who is denied a home and family and whose punishment has marked him/her as a stranger, forever viewed with suspicion, unable to find a safe haven on her/his never-ending journey, has all the elements of the real-life travails of the millions of displaced people who have been forced out of their homes in search of refuge in neighboring countries or continents. While many countries have practically shut their doors to asylum seekers and migrants, claiming that immigration poses a national security threat, Europe has been willing to house and shelter an unprecedented vast number of refugees since summer 2015. This presentation is divided into two parts. First, the paper examines the current political, social, and cultural situation in Europe. It looks at statistical data and polls taken since 2015 that study the opinions and feelings Europeans have towards the so-called ‘migrant crisis.’ The second part analyzes the topics of migration, diasporic existence, and marginalization in contemporary migrant literature, particularly in the works of Iraqi-German author Abbas Khider and Turkish-German writer Selim Özdoğan who both address the endless plight of refugees on their odyssey from one country to the next, from prison to temporary shelter, from misery to hope – and back. Lastly, summarizing the many divergent viewpoints on migration, this study considers the question whether it is possible to overcome false dichotomies and a narrative fueled by disinformation and mutual distrust in order to, as Özdoğan suggests, find our common humanity.
The Work of Tears: Lament, Particular Love, and Ethical Witness View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Steven Hopkins
I focus this project on lamentation as a form of ethical witness. In traditional religious settings and in literature, laments serve to reinscribe particular loss in all its human power. In their raw emotion, their refusal to forget and their will to remember, female laments in particular can be perceived as “dangerous,” uncontrollable. Lament has received some attention in Humanities studies, mostly in relation to the study of ancient and contemporary rural Greece. My focus and my contribution, for scholars and general audiences in the Humanities in our own time of social, personal and political trauma, is uniquely comparative, greatly expanding the range of female lament examined to date by bringing together Greek, Greek Christian, South Asian Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish sources and traditions. Using methodologies of comparative literature and the comparative history of religions this study uncovers pre-modern roots of female witness in the service of a virtue ethics whose condition is that of mourning -- forms of particular love that are inevitably works of tears. Not closure of grief, but its complex, even artful, recognition. To study the voices of female lament is not merely to ponder a fascinating though arcane world of old stories or the practices of traditional rural communities, but to discover resources for a contemporary particularist ethics, one rooted not only in attentiveness to personal pain and personal witness, but through affective contagion, to the pain of others, potentially giving rise to the possibility of awakening empathy and compassion, and not only rage or revenge.
AF447 Re-Examined Through the Lens of Human and Mechanistic Problem Solving
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hannah Williams
This paper examines the existing heuristics in aviation - specifically juxtaposing human problem solving faced with the intervention of AI and computer automation. While seemingly the two have been conditioned over the last century to nourish one another, in instances where problem solving exists outside of "normal work flows," how can each, human and automated logic, complement each other? And pressingly, what is called upon human intervention when automation presents error? This conundrum is examined, discussed, and suggested resolve by looking at flight AF447 as a cautionary tale, and cross-discipline denouement of what we as humans must consider in terms of critical thinking and problem solving in spaces (like aviation) that are increasingly becoming more dependent on artificial intelligence and automation. This paper details the history of crew resource management and collaboration as the ultimate tool in verifying the validity of technological guidance, and asks educators (or anyone observing the dialogue) to consider their own agency in problem solving as technological dependence surrounds the human experience.
