Migrants shaping Europe, past and present: Multilingual literatures, arts, and cultures
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This comparative volume examines the sustained contribution of migrants to Europe’s literatures, social cultures, and arts over centuries. Europe has never been a continent bounded by the seas that surround it. In premodern times, migrants imprinted the languages, arts, and literatures of the places where they settled. They contributed to these cultures and economies. Some were on the move in search of a better life; others were displaced by war, dispossessed, expelled; while still others were brought in servitude to European cities to work, enslaved. Today’s immigration flows in Europe are not exceptional but anchored in this longue durée process. Iberia/Maghreb, Sicily/Lampedusa, Calais are the three hotspots considered in this volume. These regions have been shaped and continue to be shaped by migrants; by their cultures; their Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and Somali; their French, English and Mandarin languages. They are also shaped by migrants’ struggles. The scholars and artists who wrote Migrants shaping Europe, past and present compose a new significant chapter in the cultural history of European migration by reflecting on the forces that have put people into motion since the premodern period and by examining the visual arts, literature, and multilingual social worlds fostered by migration. This historically expansive and multilingual approach to mobility and expressiveness makes a crucial contribution: migrants as a lifeblood of European cultures.
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Scholars@Duke
Helen Solterer
My research and teaching focus on literature and culture in French around 1400, and their interplay with contemporary thought; twentieth-century French cultural history; writing through gender.
I regard fiction as an ingenious way of thinking. Each of my books foregrounds a significant idea that numerous writers and artists put to the test in their work.
Almanach: A Natural History of Time and Fiction will appear in the fall, 2026. This work exemplifies my style of criticism that combines archival investigations with writing that adopts perennial genres of non-fiction.
I am currently at work on a book on teaching the comparative history of free speech in the French-speaking world and the United States, September 2001- the Lepen and Trump eras.
Recent books include:
Migrants shaping Europe, past and present: Multilingual literatures, arts, and cultures, ed. with Vincent Joos (Manchester, 2022) supported by grants from Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Trent Foundation. This project was accompanied by a student and faculty-designed installation, In Transit: Arts of Migration around Europe, at the Nasher Museum.
Un Moyen Âge républicain: les paradoxes du théâtre en temps de guerre (Presses Paris-Sorbonne, 2014) and Medieval Roles for Modern Times (Penn State 2010), written during a National Humanities Center fellowship.
The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (California 1995), co-winner of the MLA Scaglione Prize in French and Francophone Studies, and awarded a NEH Fellowship.
European Medieval Studies Under Fire, 1919-1945, an edited collection (JMEMS, Duke. 1995) is the first of three collaborative books I have edited. In my professional writing, I’ve long been committed to collective work.
Students interested in researching fiction in historical depth, and the history of free expression in French are particularly welcome.
I also write in a personal vein.
James Joyce Remembered, edition 2022 (C.P. Curran), ed. with Alice Ryan (UCD, 2022) marks a chapter in family literary history during the centenary year of the novel, Ulysses. My work-in-progress: another essay in family political and literary history.
Helen Solterer
My research and teaching focus on literature and culture in French around 1400, and their interplay with contemporary thought; twentieth-century French cultural history; writing through gender.
I regard fiction as an ingenious way of thinking. Each of my books foregrounds a significant idea that numerous writers and artists put to the test in their work.
Almanach: A Natural History of Time and Fiction will appear in the fall, 2026. This work exemplifies my style of criticism that combines archival investigations with writing that adopts perennial genres of non-fiction.
I am currently at work on a book on teaching the comparative history of free speech in the French-speaking world and the United States, September 2001- the Lepen and Trump eras.
Recent books include:
Migrants shaping Europe, past and present: Multilingual literatures, arts, and cultures, ed. with Vincent Joos (Manchester, 2022) supported by grants from Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Trent Foundation. This project was accompanied by a student and faculty-designed installation, In Transit: Arts of Migration around Europe, at the Nasher Museum.
Un Moyen Âge républicain: les paradoxes du théâtre en temps de guerre (Presses Paris-Sorbonne, 2014) and Medieval Roles for Modern Times (Penn State 2010), written during a National Humanities Center fellowship.
The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (California 1995), co-winner of the MLA Scaglione Prize in French and Francophone Studies, and awarded a NEH Fellowship.
European Medieval Studies Under Fire, 1919-1945, an edited collection (JMEMS, Duke. 1995) is the first of three collaborative books I have edited. In my professional writing, I’ve long been committed to collective work.
Students interested in researching fiction in historical depth, and the history of free expression in French are particularly welcome.
I also write in a personal vein.
James Joyce Remembered, edition 2022 (C.P. Curran), ed. with Alice Ryan (UCD, 2022) marks a chapter in family literary history during the centenary year of the novel, Ulysses. My work-in-progress: another essay in family political and literary history.
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