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 Seven: March 26

Screening of Stephen Frears's
and Hanif Kureishi's MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (U.K. 1985, color, 97 min.) today at 2:30 in Ash Auditorium.

Check out the Film Notes and Study Questions for further information on the director and film, and additional websites. Discussion questions may serve as starting points for your journal entries.

Don't forget to bring your journal entries (from comments on the 'visual narrative' through MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE) to class on Wednesday!

I highly recommend seeing BEFORE NIGHT FALLS about the Cuban exile writer Rainaldo Arenas at the Pleasant St. Theater in Northampton before it leaves the area.

Readings/Assignments

March 28

During the second half of the semester we will be less concerned with the immigrant journey or exile's return per se than with the representation of diaspora communities, intergenerational relationships among immigrants and their children, and interethnic relations in Great Britain, Canada, the United States and France. This week we will begin with a discussion of MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, a satirical, ironic film about the relations between Pakistani immigrants and white working-class Britons during the Thatcher years.

Supplemental readings:

Hanif Kureishi, My Beautiful Laundrette (screenplay) & "The Rainbow Sign"
Salman Rushdie, "The Broken Mirror"
Susan Torrey Barber, "Insurmountable Difficulties and Moments of Ecstasy: Crossing Class, Ethnic and Sexual Barriers in the Films of Stephen Frears"
Avtar Brah, "Constructions of the 'Asian' in Post-War Britain: Culture, Politics and Identity in the pre-Thatcher Years" in Cartographies of Diaspora
Vincent Parillo, "Dominant-Minority Relations" (handout)

Discussion question for class:

In addition to considering the discussion questions for the film, read Salman Rushdie's essay "The Broken Mirror" carefully and discuss the ways in which Rushdie's ideas about the diasporic's memory of homeland relate to other texts and films we've talked about, i.e. Lost in Translation and Calendar. Why does Rushdie use the metaphor of the 'broken mirror'?

Do you see any connections between "The Broken Mirror" and Kureishi's autobiographical essay, "The Rainbow Sign"? What are Rushdie's and Kureishi's visions of diasporic identity?

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