What It's Like to be a Refugee

There are more than 15 million refugees in the world today. A refugee is a person who has fled their home country due to persecution because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or political opinion. Refugees are often the survivors of severe human rights violations. This course will provide first-hand insight into what it means to be a refugee and will examine questions like: What makes people flee their homes and countries? What laws govern how refugees are protected? What are the challenges and opportunities when a person resettles or asks for asylum (refugee status) in a new country? Students will learn the crucial background issues, and will also meet refugees and refugee support workers in Knoxville. Students will cap off their experience by participating in a mock asylum hearing through role-playing that will teach them how the U.S. immigration system processes asylum seekers.

This seminar is tentatively scheduled to meet during First Session on TR from 12:40 pm - 1:30 pm.

Note: Please check the official timetable for the most up-to-date information about meeting times and locations and availability.

About the professors

Karla McKanders
Professor McKanders joined the faculty as an Associate Professor in 2008. She came to Tennessee from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she served was a Reuschlein Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Clinic for Refugee Asylum and Emigrant Services (“CARES”), a law student clinical course where students handled asylum cases before immigration judges, asylum officers and the Board of Immigration Appeals. The students engaged in bi-weekly seminar on substantive and procedural asylum law geared towards improving their written and oral advocacy skills. Prior to joining Villanova, she clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2003, she also was an Associate with a law firm in Michigan specializing labor and employment law. Her research focuses on civil rights, immigration and asylum law and policy. Among her writings she has explored the constitutionality of recent state and local laws targeting immigrants as well as the legal connections between past discriminatory laws and current anti-immigrant legislation. She has also co-authored with other immigration professors an extensive report on proposed reforms to the immigration system. Professor McKanders is currently a Fellow at the University of Tennessee’s Center for the Study of Social Justice in the Migration and Refugee Studies group.

Contact Information

Email: mckanders@utk.edu
Phone: 865-974-5710
Webpage: http://www.law.utk.edu/faculty/mckanders/index.shtml

Tricia Redeker-Hepner
Dr. Tricia Redeker Hepner is assistant professor of anthropology, in the area of socio-cultural and ethnographic analysis. Her research and teaching interests include political and legal anthropology, Northeast Africa and its diasporas, refugees and asylum seekers, and human rights. She is Chair of the Migration and Refugee Studies division of the Center for the Study of Social Justice and co-directs the Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights focus in the Department of Anthropology.

Contact Information

Email: thepner@utk.edu
Phone: 974-8962

 

This class is part of UT's Ready for the World initiative. Find out more about how UT is making its students Ready for the World.