Return Travel: The African Diaspora Across Genres of Mobility

FAIN: FT-278482-21

Laila Amine
University of Wisconsin, Madison (Madison, WI 53715-1218)

Research and writing one chapter of a book examining Anglophone Black literature’s representation of mobility in the African diaspora.  

I am applying for the 2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend to research and write the third chapter of my second book, Return Travel: The African Diaspora Across Genres of Mobility. By return travel, I refer to critical discourses that have remained cordoned off in the study of contemporary black Anglophone literature: African diasporic return to an ancestral home, reverse migration to post-colonies, and the return visit of exiles to their country of origin. Whether temporary, frequent, or permanent, return constitutes quests for freedom. Drawing on and bridging travel, diaspora, and postcolonial studies, Return Travel explains the significance of ubiquitous homecomings that outlasted the American civil rights movement and the independence of African and Caribbean nations.