Oil Painting titled "They are Burning the Olive Trees," by Lina Zawati
While We Wait: Senses of Home
This book-project reads interviews with refugees and displaced subjects of recent migration crises against poetry that addresses such human movement. Featuring theoretically informed commentary on a self- curated collection of interviews with refugees from Syria, Palestine, and Africa, this project asks what "home" means to these "placeless people" who left their homes under the assumption that their displacement would be temporary. How do the displaced make themselves at "home" in supposedly temporary settings? How do they sense lost homes when they create new homes? This work ultimately aims to faciliate understanding between worlds of the developed and the developing; the settled and the rootless, revealing the universal in definitions of home. Interpreting oral histories as literary and cultural contributions to ongoing studies of space/place, kinship, care, ethics, and home, this work of creative nonfiction speaks to both academic and popular audiences.
This book project has been generously supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2021-2022).
Represented by Kirsty McLachlan at Morgan green Creatives.
This book project has been generously supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2021-2022).
Represented by Kirsty McLachlan at Morgan green Creatives.
We Were the New York School: The Oral History
This collection of interviews offers a space for the New York School poets to say who they are and what they meant and mean, on their own terms. Contracted with Edinburgh University Press, for publication in 2022.
Making Home Away: A Digital Archive
An archive showcasing the ways in which Syrian refugees make themselves at home in temporary spaces of displacement. Funded by the British Academy. www.makinghomeaway.com
Making Home Away: Edited Collection
Alongside co-investigators Professor Vicki Squire and Professor Suzan Ilcan, and Helen Underhill. Edited Collection under contract with Palgrave for publication in 2022.
The Poetry Sanctuary: Community Engagement
This creative arts project offers poetry writing workshops to refugees living in displacement. For more on the evolving project, see here.
Stanza: A Digital Humanities Public Engagement Project
This Digital Humanities project engages public audiences with the poetry of their place(s). Originally created as a mobile app, it presents its general user with a sense of the literal density of urban places. Stanza is a user-friendly app ultimately aiming to engage the public in a sense of the literariness of places. Stanza (Italian, after all, for “the places one stands in”) integrates geo-tagged information with GPS technology to smoothly present its pedestrian with a sense of the poetry of their environment. In 2017, this project was generously awarded a seed grant by Florida Atlantic University's South Florida Cultures Platform, and in 2020 by a seed grant from the University of Reading's English Department.
Stanza will be available as part of www.Breadcrumbsthegame.com in 2022.
Stanza will be available as part of www.Breadcrumbsthegame.com in 2022.
Network for New York School Studies: Founding and Curating
Curating and co-organizing the creation of the New York School Studies Association, which was begun with the 2018 symposium in Birmingham. The creation of this association will take place from 2021-2024, and is funded by an AHRC Research Networking grant, I am working on this project as co-investigator, with Principal investigator Dr. Rona Cran. More about our network is available here.