Papers by Sigrid Thomsen
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The Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS), 2023
Both the 1996 novel In Another Place, Not Here by Trinidadian Canadian writer Dionne Brand and th... more Both the 1996 novel In Another Place, Not Here by Trinidadian Canadian writer Dionne Brand and the 2017 poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis by St. Lucian Canadian poet Canisia Lubrin are concerned with desires spanning the Caribbean archipelago, to Canada and back again. The narrators and protagonists of Brand’s text migrate across this archipelago while navigating various desires—for places, people, a sense of belonging, and revolution—that serve as a way of bridging distances between bodies, continents, and moments in time. Lubrin shares in that project by not only writing about the archipelago’s historic echoes and present connections, but by explicitly dedicating one of her poems to Brand. In this article, we read desire and the archipelagic in these works not just together, but through one another, conceptualizing what we call an “archipelago of desire.” The notion of the archipelago proves useful due to the concrete geographical constellation that forms the Caribbean and that can, in extension, be used to explore not merely one or two forms of mobility, but a plurality of im/mobilities, such as these speakers’ crisscrossing paths. In using the archipelago to grasp desire, we see different desires as fragmented and interwoven; they are part of not a whole but of something which resists being a whole, much like an archipelago resists being subsumed into one category; desire is then a way of assembling these things together while affirming their fragmentary nature.
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forum for inter-american research (fiar), 2021
In Edwidge Danticat's short story "New York Day Women" from her collection 'Krik? Krak!', a young... more In Edwidge Danticat's short story "New York Day Women" from her collection 'Krik? Krak!', a young woman spots her mother, who she had assumed never left Brooklyn, in Manhattan, and starts to clandestinely follow her. This plot of the daughter trailing behind her mother is juxtaposed with vignettes in which the daughter remembers things her mother has said. Drawing on Lefebvrian rhythmanalysis, Caribbean theories of rhythms, and Mobility Studies, this paper analyzes how two types of mobility clash and intersect-the physical im/mobilities of walking and the imaginative mobilities of remembering. Through this clash, the characters not only navigate their relationship to home, but position themselves in a home which spans Haiti and the United States. A rhythmanalytical reading of this story then achieves several things: It brings together Lefebvrian rhythmanalysis with Caribbean approaches to rhythm, it shows connections between a focus on rhythm and Mobility Studies; and it makes visible ways in which physical and imaginative mobilities, the mobilities of walking and remembering, can come together in everyday life to continuously forge a home.
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Transnational Narratives of Migration and Exile: Perspectives from the Humanities, 2021
In this chapter, I analyze the code-switching between English and Spanish in Junot Díaz’s 2012 sh... more In this chapter, I analyze the code-switching between English and Spanish in Junot Díaz’s 2012 short story collection 'This Is How You Lose Her' alongside Emily Apter’s (2013) concept of the untranslatable. I argue that these two approaches are comparable both in their attention to individual words and phrases and in their carving out of a highly site specific kind of (comparative) literature. In their attention to global trajectories and to the ways these trajectories can be mirrored in a single untranslated word, they gesture toward a multivocality which resists “neo-imperialist cartographies."
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Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, 2020
In her autobiographical comic 'How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less,' Sarah Glidden depict... more In her autobiographical comic 'How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less,' Sarah Glidden depicts her travels around Israel, which she undertook as part of a Birthright Israel trip funded for young Jews in the diaspora. Using watercolors to paint her comic, she depicts two kinds of mobility: firstly, Glidden portrays her own body, and those of others, traveling to and within Israel. Secondly, Glidden's avatar Sarah moves from a place of certainty regarding the situation in Israel/Palestine to one of uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt. In this paper, I focus on how the images and the text come together to show this doubled mobility, focusing on the panel structure (including the space of the gutter), the use of watercolors, and specific affordances of the medium of comics such as fantastical elements and playing with size. In carving out the way different mobilities are navigated and negotiated in this comic, I point out one instance in which the interplay between image and text can mediate an experience of travel that is at once open, processual, and highly site-specific.
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Literatur + Transfer: Tagungsband des 9. Studierendenkongresses der Komparatistik, 2020
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CLOSURE - Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung, 2018
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Talks by Sigrid Thomsen
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Books and Edited Collections by Sigrid Thomsen
Routledge African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies, 2021
Full reference:
Englert, Birgit; Gföllner, Barbara; Thomsen, Sigrid. (Eds.). 2021. Cultural Mo... more Full reference:
Englert, Birgit; Gföllner, Barbara; Thomsen, Sigrid. (Eds.). 2021. Cultural Mobilities between Africa and the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge.
fully open access now: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003152248/cultural-mobilities-africa-caribbean-birgit-englert-barbara-gf%C3%B6llner-sigrid-thomsen?fbclid=IwAR2gz_dVTWQmI2CCI-GjgBjvLAO7jbVLoXFSaZq-TqEt6USZSSxl8EsoWi4
with a foreword by Mimi Sheller,
an introduction by the editors,
and contributions by Àníké Bello, Dominik Frühwirth, Shelene Gomes, Immanuel R. Harisch, Ana Nenadović, Doris Posch, Kevin Potter, Paola Ravasio, and Anna-Leena Toivanen
This book investigates the cultural connections between Africa and the Caribbean, using the lens of Mobility Studies to tease out the shared experiences between these highly diverse parts of the world.
Despite their heterogeneity in terms of cultures, languages, and political and economic histories, the connections between the African continent and the Caribbean are manifold, stretching back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The authors in this book look to the past as well as to the present, focusing on the manifold mobile connections between the regions’ subjects, objects, ideas, texts, images, sounds, and beliefs. In doing so, the book demonstrates that mobility extends beyond just the movement of people, and that we can also see mobility in objects and ideas, travelling either in a material sense or in imaginary terms, in physical as well as in virtual spaces.
Bringing the transdisciplinary fields of African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Mobility Studies into dialogue, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.
https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Mobilities-Between-Africa-and-the-Caribbean/Englert-Gfollner-Thomsen/p/book/9780367708313
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Papers by Sigrid Thomsen
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Books and Edited Collections by Sigrid Thomsen
Englert, Birgit; Gföllner, Barbara; Thomsen, Sigrid. (Eds.). 2021. Cultural Mobilities between Africa and the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge.
fully open access now: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003152248/cultural-mobilities-africa-caribbean-birgit-englert-barbara-gf%C3%B6llner-sigrid-thomsen?fbclid=IwAR2gz_dVTWQmI2CCI-GjgBjvLAO7jbVLoXFSaZq-TqEt6USZSSxl8EsoWi4
with a foreword by Mimi Sheller,
an introduction by the editors,
and contributions by Àníké Bello, Dominik Frühwirth, Shelene Gomes, Immanuel R. Harisch, Ana Nenadović, Doris Posch, Kevin Potter, Paola Ravasio, and Anna-Leena Toivanen
This book investigates the cultural connections between Africa and the Caribbean, using the lens of Mobility Studies to tease out the shared experiences between these highly diverse parts of the world.
Despite their heterogeneity in terms of cultures, languages, and political and economic histories, the connections between the African continent and the Caribbean are manifold, stretching back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The authors in this book look to the past as well as to the present, focusing on the manifold mobile connections between the regions’ subjects, objects, ideas, texts, images, sounds, and beliefs. In doing so, the book demonstrates that mobility extends beyond just the movement of people, and that we can also see mobility in objects and ideas, travelling either in a material sense or in imaginary terms, in physical as well as in virtual spaces.
Bringing the transdisciplinary fields of African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Mobility Studies into dialogue, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.
https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Mobilities-Between-Africa-and-the-Caribbean/Englert-Gfollner-Thomsen/p/book/9780367708313
Englert, Birgit; Gföllner, Barbara; Thomsen, Sigrid. (Eds.). 2021. Cultural Mobilities between Africa and the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge.
fully open access now: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003152248/cultural-mobilities-africa-caribbean-birgit-englert-barbara-gf%C3%B6llner-sigrid-thomsen?fbclid=IwAR2gz_dVTWQmI2CCI-GjgBjvLAO7jbVLoXFSaZq-TqEt6USZSSxl8EsoWi4
with a foreword by Mimi Sheller,
an introduction by the editors,
and contributions by Àníké Bello, Dominik Frühwirth, Shelene Gomes, Immanuel R. Harisch, Ana Nenadović, Doris Posch, Kevin Potter, Paola Ravasio, and Anna-Leena Toivanen
This book investigates the cultural connections between Africa and the Caribbean, using the lens of Mobility Studies to tease out the shared experiences between these highly diverse parts of the world.
Despite their heterogeneity in terms of cultures, languages, and political and economic histories, the connections between the African continent and the Caribbean are manifold, stretching back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The authors in this book look to the past as well as to the present, focusing on the manifold mobile connections between the regions’ subjects, objects, ideas, texts, images, sounds, and beliefs. In doing so, the book demonstrates that mobility extends beyond just the movement of people, and that we can also see mobility in objects and ideas, travelling either in a material sense or in imaginary terms, in physical as well as in virtual spaces.
Bringing the transdisciplinary fields of African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Mobility Studies into dialogue, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.
https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Mobilities-Between-Africa-and-the-Caribbean/Englert-Gfollner-Thomsen/p/book/9780367708313