HACU 234

HACU 234
Traveling Identities: Immigrants, Exiles and Sojourners
in Film, Literature and Culture
Spring 2001

Eva Rueschmann
Asst. Professor of
Cultural Studies
Phone: 559-5429
erHA@hampshire.edu
Office hours: ASH 107,
M 1-2:20, Th 1-3

Mon screenings at 2:30 in ASH Auditorium
Wed seminars 2:30-5:20 in FPH 107


	Online Resources

	Check out the syllabus, including details of assignments and required texts. Communicate with other students in the class using these e-mail addresses. If you would like to set up an online discussion, please contact me. Use the research center. Ask a librarian, browse background reading. Get general advice on Division I exams. Browse links to related topics. ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS WEEKS Week One Week Two Week Three Week Four Week Five Week Six Week Seven Week Eight Week Nine Week Ten Week Eleven Week Twelve

Screenings/Announcements

Week Three: February 19

El Norte
(dir. Gregory Nava, USA 1983, 141 min., color, in English, Spanish and Mayan with English subtitles)

Showing this Monday at 2:30p.m. in ASH Auditorium. This is a long film, so be prepared to stay until 5:30p.m.

Click here for Film Notes and Study Questions. I suggest you use these questions to frame your journal entry on El Norte and to prepare for class discussion. Links on this page will lead you to an interview with Gregory Nava and a bibliography on Chicano/as in film and video.

Readings/Assignments

February 21

This week we will focus on migration from Central America to the United States through a discussion of Gregory Nava's film El Norte and Helena Viramontes's short story "The Cariboo Cafe."

1. Complete the supplemental readings in your course packet: This week's readings run the gamut from psychological studies of exile, anthropological essays on Mayan exiles, Mayan mythology to analyses of El Norte's story structure and gendered representation of Mayan exiles.

>Helena Maria Viramontes's short story "The Cariboo Cafe"
> Mario Barrera, "Story Structure in Latino Feature Films"
> Karl Taube, "Maya Mythology"
> Allan F. Bruns, "Always Maya"
> Rosa Linda Fregoso, "Female Subjectivity as Allegory in El Norte"
> Vincent Parillo, "The Study of Minorities" and "Culture and Social Structure"
> Leon Grinberg, "Exile, A Specific Kind of Migration"

I plan to begin our discussion with a look at Vincent Parillo's sociological/cultural approach to the study of ethnicity and immigration. We will then complete a group analysis of Viramontes's short story and devote most of the class to El Norte and the student presentations.

Discussion Question:

At the beginning of chapter 1, Vincent Parillo comments from a sociological perspective on the "stranger as a social phenomenon" and the different kinds of interactions between "natives" and "immigrants."

In the short story, "The Cariboo Cafe," Chicana writer Viramontes brings together the disparate, yet interconnected perspectives of Mexican immigrant children, a white cafe owner, and a Nicaraguan refugee. How does Viramontes question clearly demarcated borders between natives and migrants and subvert the notion of the stranger as other?

Comments? Questions? Feedback on this site? erHA@hampshire.edu
Copyright � 2000 Eva Rueschmann, Hampshire College