A dozen Duke students who recently returned from Cairo, Egypt, and Damak, Nepal, related the life stories of refugees they had interviewed during month-long research trips in a performance Sunday, April 22. In three-minute installments, the 150-member audience heard narratives of worry, joy, despair, peace, anger, and acceptance. Some stories included multiple elements; others, a single strand.
Uprooted/Rerouted: Narratives of Bhutanese and Iraqi Refugees Losing and Finding Homes was one of several end-of-term assignments in DukeImmerse LEAPED (Law, Ethics, and Political Economy of Displacement), a semester-long, four-course program of study of displacement. Sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Education and the Kenan Institute for Ethics and led by Suzanne Shanahan, associate director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and associate research professor of sociology, DukeImmerse offers students an intensive, interdisciplinary opportunity to study a single major social issue and fulfill numerous academic requirements. DukeImmerse LEAPED includes courses cross-listed in cultural anthropology, documentary studies, ethics, global health, international comparative studies and political science, and assignments ranging from magazine writing to service-learning projects.
The question DukeImmerse LEAPED students addressed is how displacement affects social identity and general well-being. The narratives were distilled from longer life-story interviews (gathered with the help of local translators), shaped using the techniques of documentary theater, and selected to provide a balanced view of Bhutanese and Iraqi refugees’ experiences. Examples included:
- a 19-year-old Bhutanese woman who knew nothing but life in a refugee camp and lamented the breakup of her family, some of whom have already resettled,
- a 46-year-old Iraqi man whose son has cancer who asked the student who interviewed him if he was happy, and
- a 19-year-old Iraqi man who challenged the concept of nationalities and the point of telling stories, and hoped to make a new life in the United States.
Video of the performance will be available on the Kenan Institute website later this month. A Kenan Institute DukeImmerse program on displacement will be offered again in Spring 2013.