France

This course examines cultural (textual and visual) productions about minority identities in Paris. The city has always attracted immigrants and refugees who, in turn, influence its cultural and political landscape. After a brief historical survey, the course focuses on the contemporary period with special emphasis on the legacy of World War II, colonialism, and postcolonial immigration. It explores tensions between marginalization and integration, French universalism and multiculturalism, and competing memories of traumatic histories. Through films, literature, art works, media, weekly site visits, and critical essays, students reflect on what it means to be “the other” in Paris. Through the class, students gain awareness of local and global perspectives, by enhancing their intercultural understanding of languages, cultures, and histories of local societies and the global issues to which these relate. Students also develop an aesthetic inquiry and creative expression by engaging with artistic or creative objects in different media and from different of cultural traditions. Finally, this class allows students to explore and engage with difference by thinking critically about cultural and social difference; students identify and understand power structures that determine hierarchies and inequalities that can relate to race, ethnicity, gender, nationhood, religion, or class.