2021 College Summer Institute Closing Symposium Proceedings [full text]

Ella Alemayehu-Lambert, University of Sussex: "Migrants at Sea: The Ethics of Hospitality, Sea-Rescue, and the Sublime"

Through an online exhibition, my work explores contemporary images of migrants at sea, mostly from the 2015 ‘Migrant Crisis,’ which saw an influx of refugees and asylum seekers crossing the sea to reach Europe. In an accompanying essay, I analyze the exhibition’s themes and motifs, including the fixation on, and aestheticization of, risk, the glorification of the coastguard, and the repeated image of shipwrecked boats and dead migrants. My work uncovers the ways that photographs shape our perceptions of migrants and migration, and can prevent our capacity to respond ethically and politically to the events they depict. In studies of the photojournalism of migration, the role of the sea is virtually unacknowledged. My project foregrounds the sea’s function in these images, drawing on research from visual culture, politics, ethics, and aesthetics. The aesthetic mode of the Sublime, pertaining to objects or sites of affecting power and beauty, provides a framework for analyzing the sea’s dangerous and seductive character in the images. To demonstrate the enduring inhospitable characterization of the sea, paintings of the sea that are associated with the Sublime feature alongside the photography of migration. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s ethics of hospitality, I propose that the hospitality of European state-actors and NGOs towards migrants is magnified in contrast with the inhospitable sea. These analyses are provided in the essay, whilst the exhibition itself supplies minimal text, to promote more non-prescriptive modes of engagement with the images. The exhibition is available in a basic scroll-down design, and a web-like format, that can be rearranged by participants. Through visual, scholarly and participatory outputs, my research uncovers the ways the sea is used to generate spectacle, through shocking imagery and beguiling aesthetics. By critiquing these aesthetic strategies, I aim to bring about greater collective accountability for the causes and disasters of migration.

Joanna (Jo) Darowska, University of Sussex: "Philosophic Geographies: Orientalizations of the Eastern European Migrant in 'East Wind,' 'Amy Foster,' and The Road Home"

Eastern European communities have long existed in the United Kingdom, but since the 2004 expansion of the European Union to include a number of former Soviet states, these communities have grown and attained greater visibility. Much of the political discourse surrounding the 2016 EU referendum in the UK centred around recent migration from Eastern Europe, and brought public perceptions of Eastern European migrants to the foreground. By examining literary texts depicting Eastern European characters, it is possible to get a closer look at the specificity of individual stories and humanize the experiences expressed in demographic changes. Through my readings of Julian Barnes’s ‘East Wind,’ Joseph Conrad’s ‘Amy Foster,’ and Rose Tremain’s novel The Road Home, I demonstrate how concepts borrowed from Edward Said’s Orientalism help to illuminate representational paradigms of Eastern European migrants in fiction. I focus on a concept dubbed ‘Philosophic Geographies,’ which relates to the homogenisation of Eastern Europe into one geographic and cultural space. I argue that modern literary representations of these migrants are overshadowed by simplistic notions of underdevelopment originating from eighteenth-century literature about Eastern Europe. Furthermore, historical events in the twentieth-century, such as the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, only altered, rather than replaced, the historical representational paradigms, shifting the reasons for perceived Eastern inferiority. The project demonstrates the extent to which centuries old representations of Eastern Europe and European migrants remain in British literature, allowing us to further examine how these literary paradigms extend beyond the page.

Natalie Nitsch, University of Chicago: "A Life in Pieces: The Anthologization of The Book of Margery Kempe"

Margery Kempe, a 15th-century English pilgrim and mystic, is best known for the written record of her travels she left behind, The Book of Margery Kempe. This book, the first autobiography written in the English language, details Margery’s travels over much of Europe as well as her visionary experiences. In its earliest print contexts, the Book appeared in a heavily redacted form that represented Margery’s character and the Book’s narrative quite differently from how it appears in the unredacted Book. Given that the Book is frequently read today in excerpted form, I investigate whether modern redactors continue to represent the Book in the same manner as Margery’s earliest redactors. To that end, I examine a pamphlet and an anthology that include excerpts of the Book. The first, a pamphlet promoting meditative devotional methods to laywomen, was published in 1501; the other, published in 1994, was compiled by Marcelle Thiébaux, a scholar of medieval history. Though the purposes and principles of selection behind these works are dissimilar, a similar, overarching aim is present in each of them: the character of Margery Kempe is redacted into an archetype of the particular kind of female experience her excerptors are attempting to highlight in their works. In the earlier work, this ideal is of a pious laywoman who achieves spiritual wholeness via private meditative practices; in the latter, it is of an early example of female empowerment that demonstrates the continuity of the female experience. The dissemination of parts of Margery’s narrative that fit these editors’ feminine ideals, at the expense of blindness to the rest of her narrative, presents her to the readers of these excerpts as a one-dimensional figure, and obscures the ways in which she complicates narratives about the female religious experience in 15th-century England.

Yuxin Zhang, University of Chicago: "On the Multiplicity of Language: Responses to Ocean Vuong"

Vietnamese American writer Ocean Vuong’s works hardly crystalize into a unified form. His poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds (2016) incorporates poems in the form of haibun, pop music, and footnotes; his debut novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) is, at once, autobiographical fiction, non-linear prose, and a letter addressed to someone who will never read it. It is important to ask not only what Vuong has written, but also why he has employed multiple genres to form his narrative. To answer the latter question, I turn to Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze’s essay, “What Is a Minor Literature,” in which “minor literature” is characterized by its “multiplicity” or its desire to transgress the dominant demarcation of language and literary genres. I argue that Vuong’s works present a powerful act of “minor literature,” since they exhibit a “multiplicity” in their genre and use of language. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s proposal that the suitable way to read “minor literature” is through experimental strategies, my project experiments with two alternative narrative forms as responses to Vuong’s works. In the first, a creative writing section titled “Alphabet,” I draft a set of letters, drawing from my own reflections on language and family history to respond to similar themes explored in Vuong’s works. In the second, a “Visual” section, I manipulate lines, shapes, and colors through multimedia techniques. I suggest that these visual compositions are a volatile form of language on their own, and thus add another dimension to the multiplicity of language. More than a static container for argument, I intend the project’s varying narrative forms to inspire a practice of reading that offers multiple dynamic and interactive entries in responding to literature. 

Nandini Kejariwal, University of Chicago: "What an American Education Makes of the Indian Man: Perspectives from Bollywood and Parallel Cinema"

Indian cinema, a pervasive cultural commodity for South Asian communities across the world, has been widely distributed, consumed, and analyzed. However, portrayals of Indians studying at international universities have largely been overlooked in critiques of Indian cinema. My project analyzes representations of Indian men educated in the United States of America, with a particular focus on the character “Sunny” in the Bollywood blockbuster Dil Dhadakne Do (Let the Heart Beat) and on the character “Ashwin” in the Parallel cinema release Is Love Enough? Sir. By using American-educated Indian male characters as the sole sources of social commentary while consistently associating their social awareness with their American education, both films contribute to a corpus of Indian mass media that reproduce orientalist perspectives on India from within India itself. Combining cinematographic theory, Gunther Kress’s theory of social semiotics, and anthropological perspectives on Orientalism, specifically in the context of India, I explore how these films use mis-en-scène and dialogue to establish these characters as men with feminist views, to render their beliefs as an aspect of their masculine desirability, and to present these attitudes as rare and unique. I further explore how Sunny, in true Bollywood style, is depicted as a man of Hindu virtue and is placed in a palatable plot line that loosely resembles the familiar Ramayana. Is Love Enough? Sir, keeping with the parallel cinema tradition of neo-realism, ends on an unexpected note for a romance film, providing a more nuanced account of the suitability of Western individuality in the Indian socio-cultural context. In highlighting how liberal thought is consistently associated with an American education, my findings demonstrate the ways in which Orientalist discourse persists and is wielded by the Orient upon itself through the influential medium of film, allowing it to be internalized in the self-perceptions of Indians.

Scarlett Zhao Akeley, University of Chicago: "The L-Word(s): Label-Making Among the Queer Chinese American Diaspora"

Language barriers can present significant challenges to queer members of the Chinese diaspora in the United States. While in past years, several prominent LGBTQ and/or Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) advocacy organizations have stepped up to create new education tools about same-sex attraction for a Chinese-speaking immigrant audience, I argue these efforts are hampered by unnuanced translation work. This project aims to create a more specific account of the inventive strategies queer women in the Chinese diaspora use to put sexuality into words for transnational audiences. I compare identity labels promoted by U.S.-based education resources against language used on queer women’s quannei (inner circle) social media platforms and in conversation with one female immigrant speaker. By paying particular attention to instances of code-switching or borrowings between English and Mandarin, I find that both U.S.-based and quannei queer discourse play off an English-language framework, although through two crucially different strategies. Where education materials routinely translate the “L” in LGBT(Q) as nü tongxinglian (a term indexically linked with stigma and old-fashioned thinking), quannei discourse features playful terms like lala, LES, and les that align speakers with an idealized vision of the open-minded and sexually-free American lesbian. These mistranslations between quannei and U.S.-based discourse suggest that the immigrant reader imagined by AAPI advocacy groups does not encompass the recent generation of queer migrant women.

Esme Hood, University of Sussex: "Gendering World-Systems: How Migrant Women Reframe Theories of Capital"

This project sheds light on the women who actively prop up national and global economies in the domestic sector and exposes the political legislative forces behind female migration. I expand on previous feminist scholarship addressing female migration and use World-Systems theory as a lens to center migrant women in the study of the flow of capital. World-Systems theory refers to a popular multi-disciplinary theory that emerged in the 1970s and expanded upon previous Marxist theories of capital within the world economy. Drawing on critiques of imperialism, World-Systems analysis attempts to understand the flows of capital through a holistic and inclusive understanding of various factors such as race, nationality and gender. Building on the previous work of feminist and World-Systems analysts before me, I explore the labour of migrant women, whose position has often been understated in socio-economic theories of capital. I show how the influence of women in the capitalist world system has shifted through the integration of women from the Global North into the waged workforce. As women in the Global North work higher-paid jobs, it is often migrant women who perform the labour previously labelled ‘women’s work,’ yet the domestic work they perform is often under-valued as labour which crucially impacts the economy. In my paper, I focus on the impact of female migrants on the global economy, remittance, and the policy-making that affects migration. In doing so, this project sees women as active agents within the capitalist world system and proposes a more intersectional and accurate understanding of the flow of capital.

Holly Byrne, University of Sussex: "Queer Credibility: Nine Lives, Adam, and the Destabilised Sense of Self of Queer Asylum Seekers in the UK"

Since the landmark case of HJ & HT v Secretary of State for Home Department (2010), UK law on queer asylum seekers has prioritized elusive notions of credibility as a mechanism for rejecting queer asylum applicants. This case made it easier for queer people to make asylum claims, but the new legal focus on the credibility of applicants’ claims to be queer ultimately functions by trying to disprove how applicants understand themselves. The law utilizes rigid identity labels, but many applicants have complex experiences that they do not associate with such labels. Within this legal context, my project investigates theatrical depictions of queer asylum seekers in the UK, specifically the plays Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni and Adam by Frances Poet. I analyze how these plays portray queer asylum seekers’ experiences of the UK legal system as a destabilization of their sense of self. By ‘destabilization of sense of self,’ I refer to a conflict that emerges in these plays between a desire for belonging to the country of asylum and a desire to be true to themselves. My project argues that these plays’ depictions of the asylum process offer a particular critique of queer credibility as was instituted by the 2010 legal development. I assert that the plays also present isolation as a destabilizing force that is imposed by the fiscal and geographic limitations of UK policies. Finally, this project argues that community can have a stabilizing effect, but this is limited by the pervasive impact of the law. By turning to theatrical works, my project explores aspects of queer asylum that are often neglected in the existing scholarship. The project further considers the extent to which theatre can function as legal criticism. Ultimately, it raises questions of the long-term impacts of the asylum process on queer asylum seekers in the UK.

Gaia Guatri, University of Sussex: "Mobile Workers: Migrant Women and Transwomen Sex Workers in Italy"

My project concerns the working and living conditions of migrant women sex workers in Italy. Specifically, it entails a critical reflection on migrant sex workers' lack of working protections in Italy and their daily intersectional struggles. The study centers on fieldwork conducted in collaboration with ALA Milano Onlus, an organization based in Milan focused on migrant women sex workers. The research is divided into three levels of analysis: the legal framework, the socio-cultural and political context, and the ethnographic fieldwork. Each of these sections is addressed with a feminist and postcolonial lens. My fieldwork further incorporates qualitative ethnographic methodologies such as in-depth interviews, critical analysis, participant observation, and reflexivity to collect primary data. The project argues for the importance of the recognition of sex workers’ rights and for the need to study sex work as a phenomenon intrinsically interrelated to migration, gender, and labor. I contend that addressing sex workers’ needs as part of more comprehensive migration policies will result in more inclusive legislation and constitute a step towards recognizing their fundamental rights, such as access to health care, education, and political participation. Moreover, addressing the complexity of migrant women sex workers’ conditions has far-reaching implications for the whole of Italian society because it resists the gendered misrepresentation of women embedded in patriarchal stigmas and cultural stereotypes that impact every woman’s life.

Murphy DePompei, University of Chicago: "Abortion Seekers as Economic Migrants in the Southern United States"

One of the most salient effects of abortion restrictions in the southern United States is the forced movement of abortion seekers to access the procedure. Abortion seekers are forced to travel long distances, sometimes out of state, to access underfunded, overcrowded clinics. The goal of my research is to analyze the economic effects of abortion deterrents and to explain how considering abortion seekers as economic migrants illuminates the fact that anti-abortion legislation perpetuates a cycle of generational poverty. By analyzing scholarship on modern abortion legislation and economic migration, as well as the personal narratives of abortion seekers, I found that abortion restrictions disproportionately affect poorer abortion seekers, meaning that the burden of a future child weighs heavier on their economic situation. In one study, 73% of women said they were seeking an abortion because they could not afford a child. In these cases, an abortion seeker is required to be mobile to avoid falling into a worse economic status and, in so doing, becomes an economic migrant. I consider how both economic migrants and abortion seekers have little choice in their migration. I also discuss how both migrant workers and abortion seekers begin and remain in the same location but use copious amounts of movement to change their state of being. When a government limits the choice of an economic migrant and the ability for a migrant worker to change their state of being, that government is limiting their ability to escape poverty and to improve their economic situation. Governments in the southern United States are doing just this when they enact severe abortion restrictions on abortion seekers. These governments are sustaining this poverty by forcing the birth of children via severe abortion deterrents. I contend that the economic undercurrent of modern abortion deterrents forces another generation into previously escapable impoverishment.

Margaret (Maggie) Macpherson, University of Chicago: "'How a Community Like Ours Thrives': Placemaking and Conflict in Rogers Park"

In this project I analyze the discourse surrounding the proposed development of one vacant lot in the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park. Through archival work, I contextualize the site’s position in Rogers Park and the neighborhood’s history as a destination for newly arrived immigrants and refugees. I then examine the recordings of three community engagement meetings facilitated by the nonprofit Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) on the future of the site, as well as media advertising the project. I explore how the neighborhood’s ethnic and economic diversity and culture of civic engagement are celebrated but simultaneously undermined by MPC’s flawed community engagement process. In particular, I argue that the retroactive application of economic feasibility as the chief criterion for assessing community input undercuts the premise of the engagement process as it was initially framed, obscuring the range of opinions among Rogers Parkers on what the site could be and revealing MPC’s bent towards profit-driven development. In an effort to build consensus, MPC robbed the planning process of its potential to gather honest input, accurately understand community needs, and develop a truly democratic space. I argue further that resident discourse around the site reveals how this group of Rogers Parkers conceives of the future of their neighborhood in response to a host of existential anxieties, particularly population change and loss, economic instability prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate crisis. I then place this discourse in conversation with scholarly literature on “placemaking,” which I define as the intentional development of human-centered spaces in urban areas at all scales and levels of organization, from individual actions to those of government planning agencies. Through this lens, this community case study elucidates the need for new models of community engagement and urban design in a time of increasing global precarity.

Warren Liow: University of Chicago: "Ayo Gorkhali: Nuancing Gurkha Positionalities in Great Britain and Singapore"

Gurkhas have acquired a reputation as some of the world’s fiercest warriors since 1815, when these legendary Nepalese warriors joined the British Army. Today, Gurkhas also serve in the Nepalese Army, Indian Army, Singapore Police Force, and Gurkha Reserve Unit Brunei. Their war cry, “Ayo Gorkhali”  (“The Gurkhas are here!”), strikes fear in enemies and inspires courage in comrades. Yet, for migrant Gurkhas, the very notion of “here” and their sense of belonging in their employer countries is complicated. In this project, I study the complex relationship between the identity of Gurkhas living in Great Britain and Singapore and the colonial legacies that continue to color their lived experiences today. Specifically, I analyze Gurkha identity formation through what Patricia Hill Collins terms the ‘Outsider-within’ framework and examine, with a postcolonial lens, how Gurkhas are simultaneously included in and excluded from Great Britain and Singapore in the 3 R’s: Representation, Residence, and Remuneration. Through this, the study sheds light on the intentional and unintentional exclusion of Gurkhas from the very societies they risk their lives to protect. The study further nuances our understanding of the Gurkhas’ ‘outsider’ experience through a discussion of the colonial legacies of Gurkha employment, in particular by using ideas from Edward Said’s Orientalism and by analyzing colonial representations of Gurkhas. I argue that the exclusion of Gurkhas is largely a result of the colonial and historical circumstances under which they have been employed in the British army, and whose remnants and residues continue to affect the lived experiences of Gurkhas in Great Britain and Singapore. This study reminds us that colonial constructs, ideas, and narratives from the past continue to mold the lives of people today. Only through historical sensitivity can we build empathy towards marginalized populations like the Gurkhas.

Jonathan (Jon) WuWong, University of Chicago: "Language Use in Boston's Chinatown: An Introductory Study on Language and Voting Access"

Like many residents of ethnic enclaves, Boston’s Chinatown residents, many of whom are recent immigrants, must grapple with various societal barriers that prevent access to cultural, governmental, and economic resources. One such barrier faced by Chinese immigrants is living in a location where their primary language is not that of the majority. For this investigation, I focus on language use around community politics (particularly around campaigns, voting, and activism) as a corollary for the issues of wide scale community involvement. This investigation also utilizes a multi-methodological approach to describe the linguistic tools used in both official as well as grassroot campaigns. The initial stage of my research built off the previous research framework of “Linguistic Landscapes,” a form of semiotic analysis focused on a certain geographical location that has been employed in other American Chinatowns. I then conducted interviews with community interpreters from CPA, or Chinatown Progressive Association, which focuses on educating Chinatown residents on issues like voting and housing. Through this work, I was able to analyze many of the techniques (such as extemporaneous translations, English word-borrowing, and word creation) Chinatown residents use to interact with their multilingual environments. Drawing especially from the interviews, I found a large source of community driven solutions to language as well as cultural barriers coming from translation itself, while the linguistic landscape demonstrated the type of language that is accessible to those outside of the Chinatown community. This work presents Chinatowns as sites for serious inquiry around language and migration. Furthermore, I hope that these findings will motivate future research around language use as a facilitator of community adaptation.

Noah Tesfaye, University of Chicago: "Theorizing Black Decolonization in the United States: The Revolutionary Vision of the Republic of New Afrika"

The Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was a revolutionary Black nationalist organization founded in 1968 with the objective of creating a Black nation-state in the land that makes up Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The political program of the RNA was rooted in the understanding that Black people in the US were a colonized people and that, by establishing a Black nation-state, they could achieve true freedom. Previous research has centered the RNA’s political theory as one organized around self-determination or sovereignty, rather than decolonization. This research project instead seeks to explore how the RNA recognized decolonization as an ever-evolving process and traces the theoretical basis for how the RNA justified their claim to build a Black nation-state. Through archival research and analyzing the writings of anticolonial theorists, I argue that the RNA’s framing of domestic decolonization can serve as an important model in pinpointing how Black people in America today can organize for liberation. This research paper leverages the founding documents of the RNA, along with articles written by RNA members found in The Freedom Archives, to create a point of comparison between the decolonizing work of the RNA and other Black power organizations, which often organized more forcefully towards global liberation. In a world where many people still live under neocolonialism and western imperialism, the question surrounding how to effectively guarantee the self-determination of Africans everywhere via decolonization remains up in the air. I posit that the RNA’s political philosophy offers us concrete programs and ideology to guide our efforts towards making Black liberation a reality.

Joël Cottrell, University of Sussex: "Searching for the Same Sun: Tibetan Trees in an English Garden"

Plants are increasingly being considered subjects in their own right whether in the posthumanist turn to non-human subjects, in the developing field of eco-criticism, or in the discovery of the plant communication networks known as the 'Wood-Wide Web.' I emerged from the profound isolation of 2020 to find that a local public garden, Highdown Gardens, was a way of travelling without going anywhere. Its original owners had collected plants from all over the world and, as an experiment, brought them together in West Sussex, UK. I immediately began to wonder what stories of movement and migration these plants might tell. This project attempts to tell one of those stories. I focus on two Euonymus Grandiflorus trees, which travelled from Tibet to the UK in 1950, the year of Tibet's annexation and the Assam Earthquake. They were planted in the chalky soil of the Sussex Downs and have flourished since. Bringing together the memoirs of plant-hunters, research in the archive of Highdown Gardens, literary analysis, and original poetry, I attempt to build a narrative that finds a language and form appropriate to its plant subjects, their particular kinds of movement, and their place in the human history of the time. I also ask why poetry might be particularly suited to telling plant stories, looking at the work of Louise Glück and Rainer Maria Rilke, and what we might adopt from these plant-poets to better interpret the stories of our own plants.

Mary Mouton, University of Chicago: "Notions of Home in AIDS Commemoration, from the Quilt to Instagram"

Unlike material memorials that sit atop pedestals or occupy parks, digital memorials afford distinct and intangible ways of communicating the past. To explore the effects of this digital form on acts of memorialization, I examine two instances of AIDS commemoration, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt (begun in 1987) and the Instagram account @theaidsmemorial (begun in 2016). Given the quilting medium and its connection to traditional domesticity, my research focuses on how notions of “home,” as presented by the Quilt and its surrounding literature, are transformed in the migration online. In tracking this change, I take temporality and spatiality as my central analytical terms for understanding how different interpretations of “home” are created and communicated. I argue that the Quilt’s spatially created domesticity, which for some represented a bold interjection into a heteronormative America, was often weaponized against gay men and used to defang their politics by absorbing them into an apolitical and static domestic sphere. Digitally, @theaidsmemorial’s ability to challenge, even dissolve, spatial and temporal boundaries allows it to realize the inclusive, politically active, and mobile idea of home the Quilt struggles to achieve. While the intricacies of digital memorials are still being explored by scholars and mourners alike, my research suggests that digital memorials present an understanding of the past that is distinct from their material counterparts, emphasizing how the act of challenging spatial and temporal boundaries can create more expansive histories.

Chloe Brettmann, University of Chicago: "An Environmental History of Dispossession and Return Migration in Dinétah, ca. 1850-1868"

The history of the Western United States during the 19th century is a history of dispossession, resource extraction, and the forcible reshaping of Indigenous lifeways. Conflict between Euro-American and Hispano settlers and Native Americans – over land, natural resources, and livestock – often resulted in the permanent removal of Native peoples to reservations far from their ancestral homelands. The history of the Diné (the Navajo people) is a notable exception to this historical pattern. After nearly four years of brutal internment at Bosque Redondo, a reservation on the banks of the Pecos River in Eastern New Mexico, the Diné successfully negotiated a treaty that allowed them to return to their homeland, Dinétah, an expanse of land stretching across the American Southwest. Drawing on the critical framework of historians such as Richard White and Bathsheba Demuth, who posit the demand for caloric energy – e.g., agriculture, livestock, and wild game – as a crucial site of conflict between Indigenous nations and settler colonial states, this project explores the environmental factors that led to both Diné dispossession and return migration in the mid 19th century. The study of historical maps, Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs reports, national and regional newspaper archives, and modern day Diné anthologies suggest that Diné dispossession was, in part, a product of settler apprehension regarding stock raiding – e.g., a form of energy scarcity. Furthermore, the Diné’s return migration to their homelands was, to an extent, a result of the total lack of caloric energy – in the form of agriculture and natural flora and fauna – necessary to sufficiently feed, house, and cloth the Diné internees at Bosque Redondo. I contend that the study of the historical intersections between human mobility and environmental histories is particularly relevant at a moment in time when the international community is grappling with the concept of “climate migration.” This study could inform present considerations about how we might organize a more sustainable relationship to land and more equitable access to that land and its resources.