Paper details

Paper authors	Muhammad Zaman
In panel on	Teaching violence: trauma, professionalisation and humanitarian education
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Presenters: Muhammad H. Zaman and Carrie J. Preston
(Professor Zaman and Preston are co-founders and co-Directors of the Initiative on Forced Displacement at Boston University. )

As yet another crisis forces millions to be displaced from their homes in Afghanistan, we recognize that the problems faced by vulnerable communities cannot be compartmentalized in academic disciplines. As courses and seminars in political science and international relations take up pressing humanitarian crises, we should ask why are there so few courses on forced displacement that include science, gender studies, and world literature? Should there not be a discussion of how conflict creates short and long-term health crises? Should we not worry about how the discussion of the conflict and its aftermath in the West disregards issues of sexuality or fosters misunderstandings of gender norms in Islamic countries? Should we not reflect on the writing, art and literature of those who are displaced, as well as their rich artistic and cultural achievements, to develop a more nuanced understanding, one that avoids characterizing refugees as helpless victims? Is it possible for courses to do all of this work?

In this presentation, we describe our own experience teaching a multidisciplinary course on global forced displacement – driven by a desire to have convergence between the teaching and research interests of the faculty, as well as our ethical and humanitarian concerns. We will discuss how the course has reaffirmed our belief that there is a need for both faculty and students to work across disciplines in order to understand the myriad dimensions of forced displacement, much less imagine solutions to some of the challenges faced by refugees. Our course aimed at Sophomores and Juniors, taught with colleagues from Political Science, Law, Anthropology, and Sociology (among others) has been rich but not without difficult moments in the classroom. We have regularly faced questions about the ethics of our approach and our ability to discuss and represent refugees when we have not experienced displacement ourselves, the risk of fostering narratives that seem patronizing and colonialist or touched by saviorism, and the chronic inability of academia to solve the problems we discuss. We hope that our experience in creating a multidisciplinary space for debate will foster new ideas about how a complex global challenge deserves to be introduced and discussed in the classroom.

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