Project Designation: RHOME – Representations of Home
Principal Researcher: Ana Raquel Fernandes
Co-responsible: Margarida Martins
Research Unit: ULICES
Partners: ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, Project in Medical Humanities, Remembering the Past, Learning for the Future Project (GI6), DECONSTRUCT (EU-funded project GI6)
Duration: 2017-ongoing
Webpage:https://www.rhome.letras.ulisboa.pt/
Overall description:
Bearing in mind the changing political architectures of homeland, from Canada’s 1988 Multiculturalism Act to the 2008 official apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples, from post-independence India to post-apartheid South Africa’s constitution, from post-1998 Peace Agreement Ireland to Brexit and post-9/11 USA, RHOME – examines representations of home/lessness and negotiations of belonging in societies engaged in (re)configuring multiple and sometimes conflicting heritages.
RHOME – Representations of Home studies textual and visual representations of home and belonging in literatures and cultures marked by dislocation, colonisation and migration. Strands of inquiry involve: home and language, place, conflict, the body, memory, and imaginary homelands.
RHOME activities include:
RHOME symposia (2014; 2017; 2023);
RHOSE – Representations of Home Open Seminar, open to the academic and the wider community;
RHOME Creative – calls for creative writing on the topics of home/lessness and belonging.
In a world marked by conflicts, persecutions, and scarce and/or poorly distributed resources, we aim to reflect about the notions of home that underpin personal and communal behaviour. While focusing on literatures and cultures in English, RHOME engages local students, researchers and the wider community with these themes via lectures, exhibitions and workshops (e.g. on Ubuntu; creative writing; ego-histoire).
