Materiality of Migration in the Indian Ocean & Global Asia: Artifacts, Self-Fashioning, Belonging

This conference aims to uncover the unwritten histories of migration through the material culture that people most valued and brought with them as they traversed the space of the Indian Ocean world and beyond. Scholars have written extensively about the histories of trade, migration, and the circulation of objects in Asia and the Indian Ocean rim since ancient times. We build on this to foreground the critical importance of material belongings for migrants as they traveled beyond their homelands. As they detached themselves from their homelands, their attachments to portable objects helped their material and emotional survival on the move, and their anchorage in new places. We invite papers about the flow of peoples in relation to their belongings across the Indian Ocean and Asiatic geographies addressing these inquiries:

- How do the objects that migrants carry with them on their journeys connect them to multiple elsewheres, to the places and peoples they’ve left behind. And how do the objects help ease the feelings of unease, unfamiliarity, and otherness, thus creating new meanings and ways of being in new places?
- How did migrants use clothing, crafts, and home decorations as critical forms of self-fashioning, identity, and heritage that acquired new meanings as they traversed diverse communities and spaces?
- What stories of migration are made possible by tracing the histories of unwritten things that carry great meaning, value, and security for migrants? What tales do these objects tell about migrants’ dynamic relationships to multiple elsewheres?
- How do artifacts (contemporary art, trade objects, gifts, and mnemonic objects) that people use reveal about the unwritten histories of migration, the intermediary networks, places of transit, detention and waiting, and deferred destinations?
- How do objects of the diaspora (e.g., decorative arts, musical instruments, ritual objects, family memorabilia/heirlooms, moveable treasures) connect migrants to their homelands, as well as mediate their complex interactions with cultures beyond their homelands (cultural transmission, adaptation, and hybridity)?
- What role does gender play in the materiality and journeys of the artifacts carried by migrants and diasporic communities? How do women in diasporic/migrant communities specifically contribute to the making and preservation of practices related to objects which carry memorial and familial values?
- What role do objects play in the globalization of kinship ties and affinities, and in the formation of new diasporic communities?
- How are contemporary flows of migration and the inflow of global capital leading to novel forms of material expression in architecture and built landscapes?
- What are the artifacts of diasporic political associations, particularly expressions of dissent and aspiration given voice in diverse forms, such as labor songbooks, printing presses, and pamphlets that could connect dispersed peoples, and vast spaces to homelands?

The geographical scope of the conference is expansive, focusing on mobility and displacement within and across the western Indian Ocean, Arabian Gulf, South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Africa, as well as their secondary global diasporas. We invite papers focusing on historical and contemporary research projects.

This is a two-part in-person conference to be held in Doha, Qatar, and Davis, California, in the fall 2024, organized by the GA:MA Lab (Global Asia: Mobilities and Arts) based at the Institute for Creative Research (VCUarts Qatar). The Qatar conference will be held on September 18 and 19, 2024, and the UC Davis conference will take place on December 16, 2024. Participants need to specify whether they prefer to present at the Doha, Qatar or the UC Davis conference.

The Conference Call for Papers requires a brief abstract (maximum of 500 words) that should include a brief description of the topic and research questions, including the historical period and geographical scope; and a short biography of the author (100-150 words). Select papers will be published in the Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim, a journal published by the Africa Institute and Duke University Press. Please send all the requested materials and details (including your participation venue) to globalasiamobilitiesarts@gmail.com. Some funding for travel may be available for the selected presenters.