CAPTION: Vsevolod Morozov, “Frustration.” Digital media (2022). This piece was exhibited at the Barnett Center’s 2025 show, “Ukraine: Sheltering in Place.”
Ethical Engagement
Central to the Global Arts + Humanities (GAH) mission as a driver of cross-disciplinary exchange is the recognition that critical societal challenges are manifestations of deeply embedded global-local interdependencies. These interdependences — economic, ecological and cultural — bind communities and regions in uneven and consequential ways and demand collaborative, ethically-informed engagement with global systems and the local communities they influence.
Armed Conflicts and Im/Mobility
Armed Conflicts and Im/mobility: The Courage, Creativity and Resilience of People Remaining in Conflict and Disaster Zones — funded by GAH through its Centers + Institutes Grants Competition — exemplifies GAH’s support for projects that critically engage these interdependencies. Through exchanges that crossed geographic, disciplinary and methodological boundaries, the Armed Conflicts and Im/mobility project invited reflection on how conflict and displacement unfold globally — and how these dynamics resonate within their own communities. The project’s programming engaged over 300 attendees.
Professors Angela Brintlinger, Yana Hashamova, and Dorothy Noyes oversaw this collaborative project between the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. The project examined human movement in Ukraine and other regions affected by political violence or natural disasters, highlighting recurring patterns of displacement, constrained mobility, and resilience.
The Global Arts + Humanities’ support for projects that engage with global systems and the local communities they influence powerfully elucidates cultural belonging as a relational and situational practice
Reframing Refugees Festival
The project featured a film/video festival, art exhibition, lecture series, and other events that translated global histories into contemporary conversations about the courage, creativity, and resilience among communities living amidst conflict zones.
The Reframing Refuge(e) Film/Video Festival, for example, gathered filmmakers to rethink the lived realities behind forced relocation and displacement. By questioning institutional labels like “refugee,” “asylum seeker,” and “undocumented,” the festival invited viewers to confront the political frames shaping these identities.
The films focused on mobility and immobility in conflict zones and militarized borders, revealing how people carve out dignity and agency amid systemic violence. These films traced stories of resilience as communities persist, support one another, and reimagine belonging in the face of profound upheaval.
Graduate Student Research
Armed Conflicts and Im/Mobility also provided small research grants to seven graduate students from seven disciplines. Students focused on issues such as U.S. migration bureaucracy in shaping women’s migratory journeys (or lack thereof) from Afghanistan; peace-building and post-conflict resolution in Nigeria; and global environmental politics and disaster management in Sub-Saharan Africa, among other projects.
By foregrounding interconnecting global histories and local acts of courage, creativity and resilience, the project powerfully elucidated cultural belonging as a relational and situated practice.