Date of Project
4-30-2019
Document Type
Honors Thesis
School Name
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Major Advisor
Dr. Fedja Buric
Second Advisor
Dr. Annette Powell
Third Advisor
Dr. Jon Blandford
Abstract
“Home” is a personal construct that shapes who we are. It is not a physical place, but rather an experience tied to a place. How are people to respond, then, when the socio-political institutions that rule the land that they call home say “you’re not allowed to exist because of who you are and where you come from”? In this project, I investigate the effects that physical displacement (by way of war and violent conflict) have on an individual’s identity through the analysis of narratives composed by individuals who were displaced by the Holocaust, the Bosnian war, and the current Syrian civil uprising. Through the survey of diverse materials, it became clear that the displaced identity is formed (at least in part) through the individual's adoption of a hyphenated identity that links them to both the land from which they were expelled and to the land in which they choose to resettle.
Recommended Citation
Megibben, Eli, "“We were just trying to, you know, survive”: Coming of Age as a Displaced Person and Narrative" (2019). Undergraduate Theses. 39.
https://scholarworks.bellarmine.edu/ugrad_theses/39
Letter of consent signed by each interviewee
Interview Questions.docx (13 kB)
Included in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Oral History Commons, Public History Commons, Rhetoric Commons