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AHM Conference 2023: 'Diasporic Heritage and Identity'

Located at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) is a research institute and doctoral school committed to the analysis of the remnants and narratives of the past in the present, as well as of the remaking of pasts into heritage, memory and material culture. AHM fosters dynamic, interdisciplinary and transnational research of heritage and memory, and brings together researchers working in diverse areas and fields heritage and memory studies, cultural studies, museum studies, archaeology and material culture, art history, conservation and restoration, media and archival studies, digital humanities, postcolonial and performative studies, conflict and identity studies, religious studies, music and theatre studies, Slavonic languages and cultures, Holocaust and genocide studies, European memory studies, Middle Eastern studies, and cultural, public and oral history. Continue reading...
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  • Conference date: June 21, 2023 - June 23, 2023
  • Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
  • ISBN: 9789048562220
  • Volume number: 2
  • Published: 21 June 2023
23 results

21 - 23 of 23 results

  • Diaspora in the Digital Space

    • The Making of Chinese London: Diaspora and Heritage in the Digital Age

      https://doi.org/10.5117/978904856222/AHM.2023.021

      This article unpacks the way digital mediations of the city shape how diasporic individuals negotiate belonging and forge heritage. Drawing from an analysis of 40 storytelling tours with Chinese Londoners, this project examines how the everyday use of digital media facilitates new ways of remembering, performing, creating, and archiving diasporic heritage. I argue that digital diasporic practices reconfigure heritage away from essentialized, collective, and institutional preservation strategies to instead emphasize dynamic, individual, and forward- looking expressions of the diasporic self and lived experience. Such centring of the diasporic individual is furthered by the methodology, which incorporates physical and visual approaches that prompt not only a more nuanced understanding of the participants’ lived experiences, but also a generative, agentic process that itself constitutes heritage-making.

    • Transformations of Diasporic Heritage Identities in Canada during the Covid-19 Pandemic: From Land-based Communities to Language-based Global Cyberspora

      https://doi.org/10.5117/978904856222/AHM.2023.022

      Community-based heritage language (HL) schools play an important role in identity-building of diasporic communities. This study based on twenty-five interviews with HL school leaders and teachers of the International and Heritage Languages Association (IHLA) in Edmonton, Canada aims to understand the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on HL learners’ diasporic identity formation. We approached HL schools as communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) where learners acquire specific HLs while engaged in socio- cultural communal practices. In addition, Basu’s (2011) conceptualization of school as a space of integration through multilingualism helped us understand the changes affecting immigrant integration and identity perceptions during the pandemic. Findings show that the forced transition to online teaching and learning during the pandemic led to the development of new transregional and transnational practices and collaborations. These new practices helped expand and redefine the traditional understanding of community, identity, and belonging within HL communities. As a result of the pandemic, the conceptualization of community moved beyond physical land borders towards global cyber communities linked by the given HL. This finding signals the departure from land-based understanding of identities towards language-based cybercommunity-linked identities – the shift that prompted us to examine these new relationalities through the lens of groupness, which challenges the rather broad and overused notion of identity. Our findings further indicate that these newly forged relationalities and agencies of diasporic heritage communities generated resistance to the systems of power of the host societies that marginalize diasporic heritage communities.

    • Social Media in the Diaspora: An Exploratory Approach Towards Identity Formation of the Iranian Diaspora

      https://doi.org/10.5117/978904856222/AHM.2023.023

      Following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran's morality police, Iranian diaspora communities in Europe and around the world mobilised to raise awareness of ongoing political oppression in Iran. Despite the shutdown of internet access within the country, these communities engaged in performative acts, social media activism, and street demonstrations in an attempt to rectify problems in their homeland. To further explore the potential of digital media in shaping diasporic identities, this paper’s emphasis is on the role of social media in facilitating alternative modes of political engagement and community building regarding the Iranian diaspora. Re-enactment, re-emergence, and re-evaluation of Iran's situation became a practice for constructing an alternative narrative for the ongoing political movement. This practice was carried out within the context of the Iranian diaspora's exile and displacement. Through an analysis of diaspora-generated media objects, such as protest art and online activism campaigns, this paper demonstrates how Iranian diaspora communities are utilising digital media to create new spaces of belonging and political agency. Inspired by Homi Bhabha's concept of the "third space", the analysis of the Iranian diaspora identity formations as they negotiate the tensions of displacement and the search for belonging, contends that the diaspora's sense of identity is shaped not only by the historical traumas of displacement but also by their engagement with digital media as a means of producing a transnational public sphere. Overall, a contribution to a deeper comprehension of the complex relationship between diaspora identities, political resistance, and digital media in the context of ongoing political oppression is the focal point.

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