ABSTRACT
Diaspora is a Greek word that refers to the scattering of a people from an originary location to other places. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its component parts dia-(through, over, or across) and speirein (to scatter or to sow) combine to denote dispersal and movement. Robin Cohen explains that for the ancient Greeks, “the expression was used to describe the colonization of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean in the Archaic period (800-600 BC)” but has since “acquired a more sinister and brutal meaning” for “Jews, Africans, Palestinians and Armenians,” signifying “a collective trauma, a banishment, where one dreamed of home but lived in exile.”1
