PCS 375: The Refugee Experience

Every year, the number of people across the world forced to leave their home countries due to war, climate change, and increasingly authoritarian governments, continues to rise. And yet forced migration is nothing new. Over the past 100 years, the phenomena of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and shifting national borders have resulted in events of mass displacement across the globe. This course asks the question: how does either belonging or not-belonging to a state shape the human experience? To answer it, we will view films and artworks, and read literary texts and historical reflections from the 1920s to the present that examine the experience of being a refugee.