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.

Screenings/Announcements

Week One: February 5

Sugar Cane Alley
(dir. Euzhan Palcy, Martinique, 1984)

Showing this Monday at 2:30p.m. in ASH Auditorium.

Click here for Film Notes and Study Questions. I suggest you use these questions to frame your journal entry on Sugar Cane Alley and to prepare for class discussion. Additional links on this page will give you further guidance in thinking and writing about the film's style, structure and focus.

Readings/Assignments

February 7

Welcome to the course! This week we will focus on the African diaspora in the Caribbean, discussing the works of contemporary Martinique filmmaker Euzhan Palcy and black British writer Caryl Phillips.

1. Make sure you have bought the required texts at the Hampshire College Bookstore and CopyCat Printshop.

2. Complete supplemental readings in the course packet:
-Ketu Katrak, "Colonialism, Imperialism and Imagined Homes"
-Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Diaspora"
-Interview with Euzhan Palcy and film review
Optional reading: Andrew Gurr,
"Home is neither here nor there" (Ketu Katrak responds to this essay.)

3. Read Caryl Phillips's A State of Independence.

4. Class discussion question: Compare Palcy's cinematic vision of the impact of slavery and displacement on black Caribbean identities to Phillips' literary exploration of the theme. What are Palcy's and Phillips's central concerns? How would you characterize the film's and novel's respective points-of-view? Remember that Palcy based her film on an autobiographical novel by Joseph Zobel set in the 1930s, while Phillips situates his story in 1983, on the eve of St. Kitts' independence from Britain.

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