GAFIS Symposium 2026
On the Edge: Talking Exile and Otherness
In-Person Event
March 6th & 7th · Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St, Madison, WI 53706
Exile is not simply a physical migration; it is also a way of living in which one’s
cultural, linguistic, and emotional ties are reinvented. This symposium seeks to
investigate the mutual interaction between the spatial and psychological
disconnection created by exile and the feeling of otherness. The relationships
that individuals build with their own identity and the social structures in which
they find themselves are altered when they migrate, are forced to relocate, or
escape due to pressure. Otherness is not only a position that the host society
gives to the individual, but also an experience that is lived in one’s own inner
world. For the 39th GAFIS Symposium, we would like to address the themes of
exile and otherness as an interdisciplinary topic, fostering discussion where
social sciences and the humanities can come together.
Keywords : migration, identity, nostalgia, liminality, transnationalism, diaspora, belonging, isolation, transformation, margin, memory