In my research of the term expatriate, I was incredibly intrigued by the changing of what it means to be an expatriate. From artists to nearly political refugees to workers that cause political strife, the term, and therefore the people have undergone vast changes and I’d like to know if that affect where the highest concentration of exiles moves from and to. 

This project will focus on the Hemingway-esque expatriate, the self-imposed exile of many artists through the years. I think this group’s travels as compared to Hend’s travels in Brooklyn Heights from the perspective of a modern artist moving from country to country and how the travel of an Egyptian woman with little money and a child compares to artists on their own or with their lovers. I will also be tracking Leila Ahmed's own travels in A Border Passage in pursuit of education and opportunity.

I chose these authors specifically because Hemingway's novel A Moveable Feast is what started this project in the first place. Upon finding the rest of the Paris Expatriates, I realized his relationship with Fitzgerald was very close and I didn't want to tell one's story without the other. Furthermore, the other expatriates had slightly different time periods and up bringings but Hemingway and Fitzgerald were very similar to each other. Hend fits into this narrative in that she is the only divergent piece because she never went on to do anything with her art or social circle. Furthermore, out of all the text we read this year, she is the most notably simple artistic expatriate in our three novels and the most recent narrative, making her a fantastic base line to look at modern expatriates. Ahmed is slightly more controversial but, as she definitely left home at first for education and art (she even mentions many of the Paris expatriates in her studies) and she published all of her work as an expatriate, I decided that she was definitely acceptable within this group. Also, she is definitely as good, if not a better, writer when compared to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and looking how how geniuses of the trade may have similar personal stories was very interesting and I was not going to let the opportunity go by.

I hope to find a correlation between the movements in regards to time, reason, and location. Furthermore, I also will be looking at differences between these two sets of expatriates and what those differences may say about the changing society.