ABSTRACT
Yet though we are profoundly emplaced creatures, we are not place-bound. Humans have always wondered about other places and the people that might inhabit them, and some have acted on this curiosity, generating travel narratives that date to ancient times yet whose fascination of discovery resonates with contemporary readers. For example, the dramatic account told in Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico is as thrilling a read for today’s students as it was 500 years ago. Humans have also long used forced displacement as a punitive strategy, whether this involved the individual cast out from the village, or whole groups of people driven from their homeland because of ethnic or religious persecution. Indeed, the dark side of Díaz del Castillo’s story of adventure and discovery involves the enslavement, massacre, and forced displacement of much of Mexico’s indigenous population. Today, many people find themselves relocating several times over their life course, often living far away from family members. You yourself may be a voluntary migrant, on the move in search of educational opportunities, a better job, or part of a family whose primary decision-maker has decided to relocate. You may be a member of a diasporic community (this term refers groups displaced from their ancestral homeland), or perhaps a refugee; both are so-called involuntary cosmopolitans who have been forcibly displaced and relocated or scattered across the globe. In less traumatic experiences of globalization, we may sample cuisines, musical styles, fashions, and media, and thereby be tempted to try on different identities, or to invent new identities, with the elements assembled from a list of far-flung places.
