Children of Conflict: Transnational Kinship and Literary Form

My second book project, Children of Conflict: Transnational Kinship and Literary Form, studies the movement of children across national borders and its imprint on literary and cultural production. From the Kindertransport, which brought Jewish refugees to Britain in the short period between Kristallnacht and the outbreak of war, to Korean adoption, which sought placement for mixed-race G.I. babies after the Korean War, children have been used as forms of state-sponsored reparation for violent conflict. A veritable tangle of bloodlines, family lines, and national borders, these figures concentrate major geopolitical crises into a singular locus, with the discourses surrounding their mobilization revealing dominant juridical, political, and social structures at work in the world. These questions have gained even greater urgency in light of current migration crises in Europe and the U.S., for which children have emerged as the paramount subjects and objects of sympathy, outrage, and political action. Research for this project is currently in its preliminary stages.

[image: Operation Kiddy Car, US Air Force, Korean War]