Jonathan Nash

Supervisor: Dr. Lincoln Shlensky


Since the Syrian boy Alan Kurdi drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015, more than four-thousand refugees have lost their lives attempting a journey across oceans to Europe. The images of the wrecked boat and the drowned boy, seized by the news cycle, unfolded a compassionate narrative of the contemporary refugee crisis. Yet, the image of the migrant boat also presents itself as an image of anxiety in the Euro-American imagination towards the influx of refugees “illegally” entering their borders. In what ways have representations of the migrant boat shaped, historically and conceptually, narratives and identities of migration and refugees? My research examines the image of the migrant boat in postcolonial and global literatures, in order to understand these discrepancies in Euro-American responses to the refugee crisis.

Recent Scholarly Activity:

Nash, Jonathan. “Dionne Brand, Land to Light On (1997).” Moveable Type: Print Material in Special Collections, ENGL 500, Fall 2018.

Nash, Jonathan. “What are Iranian Women Dreaming About?” TRANSverse, no. 17, Sep. 2018. Web.