Youth and Migration Dakar/Paris Summer 2013 Program
Prof. Odile Cazenave (BU Romance Studies) and Lionel Ruffel (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Paris VIII) will direct a new Study Abroad program in Summer 2013.
Paris-Dakar, Dakar-Paris. These two cities are linked by the famous ‘Paris-Dakar’ Rally. But the association also allows us to think about several centuries of history, colonization, and shifts in population and migration. In this program, students will discover Paris and Dakar in dialogue, and explore artistic responses–from writers, film directors, and musicians–to new dynamic shifts in population and migration. This dialogue, these connections between a northern city and a southern one, between Europe and Africa, cast new light on the thorny issues of our globalized world.
This Boston University summer program allows students seven weeks to live two experiences and discover the interconnectedness of seemingly separate worlds.
Two courses will be offered: Historical and Social Dynamics of Migration, which will analyze the complexities of urbanization and migration through the social sciences and look at population movements in Senegal and in France, and Youth and Migration in Literature and Film, which takes a look at displacement, migration, postcolonial cultures, and identities as themes of African literature and film both on the African continent and in the diaspora in Paris.
At issue are a series of myths: France/the West as a land of opportunities; the concepts of “home”, “here” and “there”; the mechanisms of migration for both those who have departed and the family and community at home.
According to Cazenave: “Dakar, Senegal, and Paris will help us examine the evolution of literary and cinematic aesthetics in seminal works by writers and filmmakers about youth and migration in a global economy.”
Details will be forthcoming on the BU Study Abroad webpage.