The Exile and Resistance series returns with two very special guests, Ghayath Almadhoun, a Damascus-born, Palestinian poet who has lived in Stockholm and Berlin, has published four books of poetry, and is currently a visiting fellow at the Thomas Mann House, and Lan Duong, Associate Professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, scholar of postcolonial cinema, gender, and Asian-American studies, founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective, and author of the 2023 poetry collection: Nothing Follows. Both speakers address the challenges and complexities of refugee experiences through their writing. Almadhoun and Duong will read selections of their poetry and will then join in a moderated discussion with Paul Lerner, Max Kade Institute director.

The century stretching from the end of World War I to the present has seen an explosion in mobility and migration. The post-World War I order—persistent outbreaks of violence, and shifting European and Middle Eastern borders and boundaries—created what Hannah Arendt called “the problem of the stateless people.” The rise of the Nazis and other fascist movements in the 1930s led to a groundswell of emigrants and exiles, and both the Nazis’ genocidal war and post-World War II upheavals and persecutions further exacerbated the crises. In the past decade, the number of forcibly displaced persons has exceeded those of the years around World War II. If the European migrant crisis has served as the main sounding board for current discourses around migration, it is far from the only epicenter of global migration.

What can the history of forced displacement teach us about the current moment? How, in turn, does a history of the present alter our understanding of the past? And given the persistence of the problem of statelessness, is “crisis” the best framework to speak of migrants and refugees? Indeed the multidirectional patterns of so-called economic migration, too, intersect with the histories of imperialism, nationalism, and fascism in often-unpredictable ways, putting pressure on prevailing notions of “forced” versus “voluntary” displacement.

With a broad historical and geographic lens, the Exile and Resistance lecture series examines the overlapping trajectories of exile, migration, and statelessness over the last century, shedding light on experiences and representations of displacement, loss, and persecution and highlighting sites of political and cultural resistance. The series will bring together scholars, artists, and activists for ongoing interdisciplinary presentations and discussions around recent research, films/ documentaries, and artistic pieces that focus on the subjects of exile and resistance in historical as well as contemporary contexts and in a multitude of geographical regions.

Inspired by USC Libraries’ exile studies collections, which include the papers of German-Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, Exile and Resistance is the result of a joint partnership between USC Libraries, USC Max Kade Institute for Austrian–German–Swiss Studies, and USC Dornsife Department of French and Italian.

Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet born in Damascus, Syria, and emigrated to Sweden in 2008. Now he lives in Berlin. He has published four poetry collections in Arabic and his work has been translated into dozens of languages. Ghayath Almadhoun collaborated with other poets and artists and his poetry has been part of work by US artist Jenny Holzer and German musician Blixa Bargeld, and others. His latest collection Adrenalin, published in English by Action Books 2017, was among SPD Poetry Bestsellers in the US, and was nominated for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. His selected poems Ein Raubtier namens Mittelmeer (Predator called the Mediterranean), Arche Verlag, 2018, ranked top of the Litprom-Bestenliste 2018 of best books translated into German.

Lan Duong is Associate Professor in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism (Temple University Press, 2012). Dr. Duong’s second book project, Transnational Vietnamese Cinemas and the Archives of Memory, examines Vietnamese cinema from its inception to the present day. Her research interests include feminist film theory, postcolonial literature, and Asian/American film and literature. She has coedited an award-winning anthology called Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders in Literature and Art (University of Washington Press, 2013). Duong is a Founding Member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. She currently serves as the website editor for the group (www.criticalrefugeestudies.com) and is co-editor for the series, Critical Refugee Studies, at the University of California Press.

The event series is a collaboration with the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies and the Department of French and Italian at USC & the USC Feuchtwanger Memorial Library