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Arundhati Sethi profile photo.PhD student

Email arundhati.sethi@otago.ac.nz

Thesis title

Spatialized Optics in Contemporary Refugee Comics

Abstract

I propose that several refugee comics that have emerged in the wake of the contemporary refugee crisis mobilize what I call a spatialised optics for the reader. Such an optics allows for a structural mapping of modern forced migration and it goes beyond the dominant suffering-empathy model of engaging with refugee image-stories. The spatial-graphic form of these comics attempts to re-configure the impaired relational equation between refugee and non-refugee subjects, spaces, and times by giving it a plural-relational design. I put the narrative-aesthetic strategies of selected refugee comics in dialogue with key political ideas found in Hannah Arendt, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Rancière. I do this owing to their shared interest in plurality, relationality, and spatiality. I argue that the spatialized mode of looking offered by these comics can be a productive way to re-politicize refugees in the public imaginary and to resist their violent othering.

Supervisors

  • Catherine Fowler
  • Rochelle Simmons

Personal bio

Arundhati Sethi is a PhD candidate in the Departments of Media, Film, and Communication and English and Linguistics at the University of Otago.

She received her Master's in English from the University of Mumbai and explored Anup Singh’s Partition films for her dissertation.

Her interests lie in migration literature and the intersections of literary and visual art forms.

Has taught

  • Tutor for Introduction to Communication Studies MFCO103 (2023)
  • Introduction to English Literature; Visiting Faculty at Whistling Woods International, Institute of Film, Communication and Creative Arts, Mumbai (2022).
  • Adaptations of Shakespeare in Cinema, Film Adaptations of Novels, 18th-19th Century British Novel; Visiting Faculty at Post Graduate Department of English, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai (2018-2022).

Publications

Sethi, A. (2021) ‘Mapping Intersections: A dialectical reflection on postcolonial memory in Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal (Past, Present, Future) ’, Studies in South Asian Film and Media, Vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 67-81.

Conference papers

Sethi, A. (2023) ‘Interrupting Structural De-humanization in Hayfaa Chalabi’s Refugees Welcome? ’. Comics and/as Resistance, Oxford University, UK, June 22-23.

Sethi, A. (2022) ‘Drawn Together: Re-viewing the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Ali Fitzgerald’s Drawn to Berlin’. Performing Global Crises Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, November 30- December 2.

Sethi, A. (2019) ‘Suspended Bodies in Transit: Visualizing the Margins in Sam Wallman’s Web Comic At Work Inside our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story’. National Conference on Re-imagining the Margins: New Literatures & Alternative Marginalities, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, India, March 5-6.

Sethi, A. (2017) ‘Bleeding Boundaries: Mapping the Destabilization of Territorial Regimes in Anup Singh’s Partition film Qissa: A Tale of a Lonely Ghost ’. Global Conference on Indian Diaspora Studies and Policies, International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands, October 5-7.

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