Readings/Films

Selected Readings in Course Reader; Films to be announced.

Course Description:

This course investigates the itineraries and narratives of refugees today. Contemporary French fiction and film will help us reconstruct aspects of a refugee’s flight and chart their perilous journey across land and sea into Europe. We will pay particular attention to the forms of personhood that emerge or are put into crisis by such experiences as clandestine passage, detention, surveillance, encampment, deportation, the asylum application, undocumented labor, and so forth. We will also consider the importance of narrative in organizing histories and selves in ways that are audible and visible for a refugee’s place of sanctuary. How is the refugee currently “situated” in historical, conceptual and geopolitical terms? How pertinent are previous histories of racial violence (e.g., slavery or the Holocaust) for thinking about refugees today? What are the possibilities and limits of humanitarian approaches to refugees? Of human rights discourses on refugees? What are some possible relations between hospitality and artistic form? To what extent can art transform existing frames of representation and protection? These and other questions will be pursued through readings of literature and film.

Prerequisites:

no language prerequisites

Additional Information:

All reading, writing and discussion are in English. Fortnightly screenings of films will be scheduled.  This course satisfies “Outside Elective” course requirement in the French major.   This course does not satisfy requirements for the French Minor.

This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature or International Studies.

Section times and locations in the Schedule of Classes