Photo credit: From top-left to bottom-right: United Nations’ “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees” (1951), Lasar Segall. Navio de emigrantes (1942, Museu Lasar Segall), MS. St. Louis in 1939 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Gabriela Mistral. “La huella” (Lagar), Raúl Zurita, Sea of Pain (2016, Artforum), Refugees line up outside the American consulate (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Leila Danziger, mastros cantados, todos os navios (2018, courtesy of the artist), Alfredo Jaar, One Million German Passports (2023, courtesy of the artist). All these materials will be analyzed in class.
Description:
How can we grasp and conceptualize the experience of being displaced from home, stranded in a refugee camp, or living undocumented in a foreign country? This interdisciplinary course explores this question by interpreting literature, cultural and political theory, international law, film, and art on forced displacement by twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American authors and artists. Its goal is to provide students with a sophisticated critical vocabulary and a sound historical perspective to grapple with the cultural, ethical, historical, and political implications of today's global migratory and refugee crises.
Instructor: Mauro Lazarovich