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Performing "Home": Domestic, National, & Transnational Longing & Belonging

Session 4 - Saturday 3:00-4:30pm
Henry Hall 203
Presiding Officer: 
Heather Wozniak
  1. "His Immortal Song": The Place of John Howard Payne's "Home, Sweet Home" in the American Imagination. Lora Burnett, University of Texas, Dallas

    This paper will examine how the 19th-century song "Home, Sweet Home" both formed and performed middle-class sentimentalism about "home" as idealized domestic space. It argues that the song's enduring popularity reflects American anxieties about mobility and rootlessness.

  2. From Pearl Harbor to Paradise: Narrating the Pacific War in Post-War Honolulu. Amy Lyford, Occidental College

    This paper explores a Pacific War Memorial designed for Honolulu (1946-1962). A drive-by, multi-site memorial, it bound Honolulu residents and visitors together through shared experience, while emphasizing the territory's shifting national identity.

  3. "Go Back? After All We've Been Through?": The Return Home in Children's Literature. Carmen Nolte, University of Hawai'i, Manoa

    Building on Nodelman’s and Zipes’ discussions of the recurrent home/away/home plot in children’s literature, this paper argues that the “home again” ending represents a communal event that can challenge nationalist tendencies even as it appears to reaffirm them.

  4. Robert Browning's Homesickness. Alison Chapman, University of Victoria

    Robert Browning's "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" suggests the ironic interplay of homesickness and the poetic condition.

Session Type: 
Special Session
Session Status: 
Closed