Listen to an interview with Robert Barsky (.wav)
For refugees and many natives, the Americas represent a land of opportunity where dreams can come true.
In the face of border issues, economics, social upheavals, free trade, migration, political maneuvering and increased security concerns, is it feasible for the Americas to live up to this billing? Should it be?
AmeriQuests, a new academic e-journal based at Vanderbilt University and the official publication of the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt, will examine issues surrounding the American dream and lived realities in the Americas twice a year.
AmeriQuests will be officially launched on Nov. 12 with a celebration on the Vanderbilt campus that will include a reception, a panel discussion and an art exhibit. The inaugural issue of AmeriQuests will be available online (a print version can be ordered), and an auction of a photograph from the art exhibit will be held to support work on migrant labor in the Americas.
The events begin at 4 p.m. with a gathering at 201 Alumni Hall. Photographer and writer Rick Nahmias will give an hour-long presentation at 4:30 p.m. on his photographs of migrant workers in California. The photographs will remain on exhibit at Alumni Hall through Dec. 3.
At 5:45 p.m. the Canadian Consulate in Atlanta will host a reception in 203 Alumni Hall. A panel discussion will cap the evening from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. in 103 Wilson Hall.
The panel discussion is titled "Guest-Worker Programs and the Labor-Immigration Crisis: A Comparative U.S./Canada Perspective." Panelists will include Nahmias; Veena Verma, a human rights lawyer active in migrant agricultural workers’ rights; Kerri Sherlock of the Break the Chain Campaign, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies that fights slavery; and Bill Beardall, executive director of the Equal Justice Center in Austin, Texas, which advocates for the economic and civil rights of low income individuals and communities.
The panel discussion and the exhibit, which are co-sponsored by a number of Nashville community organizations, are free and open to the public.
The journal will explore the relations among North, Central and South America in a variety of ways ÂÂ academic research, fiction, history and more ÂÂ while contributing in a timely fashion to important policy issues relating to the Americas.
"Part of the problem in terms of xenophobia, racism and general fear of the other is the sense that migrants who come to America are on a quest only to pluck the gold off the trees," said Robert Barsky, founder and co-editor of AmeriQuests and professor of French and comparative literature at Vanderbilt.
"The reality is so much more complicated than that, but it is one way that we sell certain policies. I’d like to think the journal is going to open our minds to the vastness of the Americas and the variety of these quests."
AmeriQuests will offer a clear outlet for the best of an enormous amount of work and thought about the Americas.
"We put out a very modest call for articles, and within four to six weeks had enough publishable material for two full issues," Barsky said. "There’s a need for this."
Barsky, an expert in language studies, migration, border and refugee issues, arrived at Vanderbilt last year from Yale University, where he was the Canadian Bicentennial Visiting Associate Professor. The idea for a journal about border issues came with him, but its focus was sharpened when he opted to partner with the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt.
"With AmeriQuests, the Center for the Americas has the opportunity to expand its reach well beyond that of traditional print journals," said Vera Kutzinski, director of the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt. "If one wants to engage audiences in both academic and non-academic settings, especially in the Americas, the question of access becomes crucial. Publishing a journal online, then, is not just a matter of increasing speed with which discussions and research can be disseminated, but also to whom.
"We want to make our material accessible to readers who do not have the benefit of major research libraries in their immediate neighborhood and also to those for whom English is not their first language," said Kutzinski.
The first issue of AmeriQuests sets a broad tone. There’s a long essay on the relationship between human rights and asylum, fiction inspired by being an expatriate U.S. American living in Greece, and a piece on the journeys of On the Road author Jack Kerouac.
Virginia Scott, chair of the Vanderbilt Department of French and Italian, contributes a historical piece on the origins of Demonbreun Street in Nashville.
"It’s a fascinating piece on the connections between that street and this person, Timothy Demonbreun, who came from Quebec and earlier from France and reinvented himself in Nashville, Tenn. He did it in part by giving himself a title, as though he were ‘Monsieur de Mon Brun.’
"What could be a better example of a quest for America than coming and reinventing yourself by giving yourself a royal title? And then, in the way America has worked, getting a street named after you that no one could possibly recognize as having French traces?" asked Scott.
The AmeriQuests journal will be available online free of charge. The Center for the Americas will sell print-on-demand copies of either the whole journal or of selected articles. Vanderbilt’s Washington office will distribute the journal to Congress.
The AmeriQuests website is www.ameriquests.org.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu