GIRC Screens ‘Waltz With Bashir’
Graduate International Relations Student Council at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University held a Dec. 8 screening of the 2008 Israeli film “Waltz With Bashir.” The animated film explores the human costs of violence through the lens of a soldier’s experience in the 1982 Lebanon war.
The screening was accompanied by a student discussion led by Ivan Arreguin-Toft, assistant professor of International Relations.
“I helped to plan the film night as a member of GIRC. We knew that Professor Toft was a big film aficionado, and he is always great about helping us connect past events to things going on in the present,” said Nyeleti Honwana, a MA candidate in the African Studies program. “Our discussion after the film focused on survivor’s guilt and the ramifications of war for the people who have to continue on. We concluded that the actions of war need to be remembered, so that the sacrifices of those who died are not in vain.”
The Graduate International Relations Student Council (GIRC) is the official graduate student organization of the Pardee School. This vibrant student group organizes a variety of activities to enrich students’ lives, including dinners with faculty members and social events.
“Even as compared to text, film—indeed art more generally—remains one of our most powerful means of understanding; and that includes matters as important and complex as politics, war, and justice,” said Toft.
Each year in the Spring Semester, the GIRC organizes a graduate student conference, centered around a theme chosen by the students. The conference draws graduate students from the many colleges and universities throughout the Boston area and beyond.