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RUTGERS SEMINAR IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK 2010-2011 - Public lecture SONIA CANCIAN (Concordia University/Université de Montréal) The Poetics and Politics in the Intimate Worlds of Immigrant and Homeland Epistolarity Thursday, 31 March - 5 p.m. (Teleconference Lecture Hall, Alexander Library) ABSTRACT "The letter--perhaps the most intimate manifestation of our humanity for millennia." Ivar Ivask One vehicle that has maintained links between kin, friends, and lovers was the letter. Personal letters written to loved ones in international migration are an expression of the letter writers' poetics and politics captured in their intimate worlds. Drawing from my recently published book, Families, Lovers, and their Letters: Italian Postwar Migration to Canada (University of Manitoba Press, 2010), I will be discussing the relationship between migration, the experience of emotions, and the intimate letters that were written within the epistolary spaces of migrants and their loved ones who remained in the homeland. In doing so, this paper invites scholars to consider the immigrant letter as more than a narrative about women and men's acculturation and integration into a host society. Moreover, its two-fold purpose compels researchers and scholars to consider a different kind of letter as part of the epistolary narrative in international migration: the largely neglected love letter. In this discussion, emotions related to romantic and filial love are explored within epistolary communications exchanged between women and men in both receiving and sending societies--a medium that continues to engage migrants and homeland letter-writers around the world. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on a research initiative--with which I am associated--on immigrant letters at the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, the Immigrant Narratives Online: Letters in International Archives Project (INO), a project that is increasingly attracting attention from researchers, students, and archivists in North America and beyond. More about RUTGERS SEMINAR IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK 2010-2011 events and directions at: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/book_history/RSHOB_2010-2011.html For their support for the lecture series, the Rutgers seminar in the History of the Book would like to thank the following programs and units at Rutgers: Center for Cultural Analysis | Departments of English, French, and History | Program in Early Modern Studies | Rutgers University Libraries | School of Arts and Sciences (Dean's Office) | School of Communication and Information | The Transliteratures Project -- Marija Dalbello Associate Professor School of Communication and Information 4 Huntington Street Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-1071 Voice: 732.932.7500 / 8215 FAX: 732.932.6916 Internet: [log in to unmask] http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/directory/dalbello/index.html