Fall 2013

 

Emmanuel Bruno Jean-Francois

“French and Francophone Theater”
French 131

This course will begin with a discussion of drama both as a literary genre and a performing art. An overview of the history of French and Francophone Theater will further focus on aesthetic and political influences having a direct impact on the evolution of theater, both as art of writing and performance, with regard to its role, practice and understanding. For the study of literary texts, we will focus mainly on 20th century plays dealing with struggles of individuals and social groups in particular historical, political, and cultural contexts. Themes such as violence, revolt, political power, race and identity as represented in 20th century plays will also be discussed. Finally, we will reflect on the distinction between modern and classical theater through the reading of a classical French play. Literary texts studied will include works of Albert Camus, Jean Genet, Aimé Césaire and Jean Racine.

We will further discuss the importance of staging as an essential part of Theater, by referring to the works of contemporary directors such as Patrice Chéreau and Ariane Mnouchkine.

 

Melissa Tandiwe Myambo

“The Migration-Development Nexus: Diasporas and Return Migration”
International Development Studies 188-1

This course examines the recent concentration of the UN, World Bank, governmental entities, non-governmental organizations and scholars on the relationship between labor migration and social and economic development. In an era of hyper-mobility we will first come to a working definition of “migration” and examine different notions of what constitutes “development”? How does the migration-development nexus rethink what used to be called “brain drain,” “under-development” and “uneven development”?

Using an interdisciplinary assortment of readings, we will try and tease out how transnational migrants to industrialized countries are helping to develop their countries of origin through diasporic engagement and return migration whilst simultaneously examining critiques of this development paradigm. We will pay special attention to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to analyze how much their strengthening economies are related to increases in FDI (foreign direct investment), skills transfer, social and financial remittances, more environmentally-sustainable and gender-equitable policies and the return migration of their (highly-skilled) diasporas.

 

Alvin Wong

“Sinophone Literature in Literary World Systems”
Comparative Literature 191-4

This seminar introduces students to literature written in Chinese or about the Chinese in the Sinophone world at the margin of China and outside of China. It focalizes the relationship between nation-state and linguistic nativism, colonialism, settler colonialism, and their asymmetrical relations to diasporic movements, as well as new literary force that emerges within creolization of cultures. Students will read works by early writers who imagine and at times racialize the South Seas (present day Southeast Asia) during the 1920s. Work by well-known authors like Shen Congwen, who writes from the geographical margin of China, will be studied alongside the colonized linguistic politics of the Tibetan writer Alai. We will study other authors from Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Anglophone Caribbean whose Sinophone articulations map both horizontal and vertical scales in the longue durée of global migrations, mix-raced ancestry, histories of colonialism, and new urban forms in globalization. Students will also become well versed in current theories and approaches in world literature.