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Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Masters Project

Department or Program Affiliation

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Heim, Stefania

Second Advisor

Wong, Jane

Third Advisor

Odabasi, Eren

Abstract

The project, "The Theory of Nomads: Home in the Wake of Diaspora" explores what home means beyond geography when living in diaspora. The project argues that the nomad; a person who exists in diaspora, must constantly dis/embody the word home and the ontological ideas that surround it. Intertwined with theory, film, personal experience, poetry, and more this project allows for different forms of lingual expression by creating a multi-modal framework. It complicates how the nomad as a positionality and praxis, navigates home through governmental corruption, the living archive, ghostly existence, and what it means to be in love in a colonized world.

This project provides the first two chapters of this novel in progress. The word nomad functions as a positionality that navigates diaspora. For the nomad, it is broken down into four different forms of transformation: The Nomad, The Wanderer, The Ghost, and The Dreamer. Each chapter focuses on different forms of close reading analysis such as the film Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (chapter 2), Babel written by R.F Kuang (chapter 3), and Poeta en San Francisco written by Barbara Jane Reyes. As this project grows, this project will start to ground itself in the Filipina American Diaspora or Transnational Diaspora. Using these different forms of artwork, it allows to decenter whiteness in correlation to diaspora.

Ultimately, this project enters the conversation of Diasporic Studies by highlighting the tension between optimism and pessimism when it comes to stories of diaspora, exile, and loneliness. The nomad is a person/positionality/praxis that suspends what it means to exist in a colonial world. By giving language to the conversation of home, it is an active form of resistance that starts at the language level in the hopes of turning into a praxis of resistance that enters everyday life.

Type

Text

Keywords

Home, Diaspora, Asian American, Filipino Diaspora, Ethnic Studies, Decolonial, Postcolonial, theory, creative writing

Publisher

Western Washington University

OCLC Number

1523876819

Subject – LCSH

Home; Filipino diaspora; Ethnology--Study and teaching; Decolonization in art; Postcolonialism

Format

application/pdf

Genre/Form

masters theses

Language

English

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

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