In an age of increasingly globalized relationships, belonging somewhere along with a group of like- minded others has never seem so critical to the human experience. Where, how, and with whom we belong has become an essential measure by which, in the 21st century, we forge our identities, we shape our lives and account for our own places in the world, we experience our own self-worth, gauge our ability to succeed, and imagine what happiness looks like. Yet belonging is not a given for vast numbers of people across the globe. For the displaced who are forced to settle in places whose values, practices, and languages they don’t share, it is a journey of considerable challenges and painful struggles, a dream all too often unattainable of building a new home. For others, however, home is precisely where they feel they do not belong–the place they choose to reject in order to become whom they want and need to be.With a selection of short stories and films from the French and the Francophone world, this course will take us along the journeys of uprooted people who long to belong. We’ll bear witness to the dreams and struggles of migrant workers, second-generation teenagers, colonial subjects, working- class school children, and marginalized men and women who are excluded from the opportunities available among the privileged classes and dominant social milieux. We’ll ask how fictional accounts of the lives of misfits and outsiders challenge us to rethink what belonging means.
BELONGING IN FRANCOPHONE LITERATURE AND FILM is an introductory course intended for first- and second- year students; more advanced students not majoring in the Humanities are welcome as well. No previous college-level experience with literary or film analysis is required.