HOMInG Seminar 31_2019, on April 11 at 4pm, will be with sociologist  Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College and Harvard University). Prof. Levitt is a leading scholar on migrant transnationalism, transnational social protection and cultural circulation, among other topics. We look forward to hosting her at the Dpt. of Sociology, University of Trento.

See the title and abstract of her presentation below.

All welcome to participate in the seminar!

Creating Home – National Literature as a Window on Belonging

Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College and Harvard University)

In this paper, I explore how “national literature” is used to create, reinvent, and reposition the nation vis á vis the globe.  Using the cases of Lebanon, Argentina, and South Korea, I explore how these different kinds of nations produce different kinds of national literatures, who is included as a national writer, and what kinds of work national literature is expected to do.  I examine the conditions under which national literature enables countries to cope with immigration and to scale shift, or claim a more prominent position, in the global cultural hierarchy.