Hum 360 - The Traffic in Women and Contemporary European Cinema

Institution:

Washington University in St Louis

Subject:

Description:

What binds society together? One of the most influential answers to this question was offered by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. He argued that the fabric of a society is formed by a network of exchanges among kinship groups, which circulate three kinds of objects: economic goods, linguistic signs, and women. In this course, we inquire into the place of women in this argument. We trace rudiments of the traditional marriage system (a father figure still "gives away" the bride in the marriage ceremony), its range of displacements in a global economy (transnational wives, nannies, and domestic servants), the role of new media in the formation of new systems of trafficking (Internet brides), and the place of the debate on gay marriage within the larger conversation. We read texts by Friedrich Engels, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gayle Rubin, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Arlie Russell Hochschild; and we watch a number of films that dramatize the traffic in women in the context of contemporary Europe: Coline Serreau's Chaos, Lukas Moodisson's Lilja 4-ever, Cristian Mungiu's Occident, Nilita Vachani's When Mother Comes Home for Christmas, Fatih Akin's Head-on, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Silence of Lorna.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.wustl.edu

Phone Number:

(314) 935-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

The Course Profile information is provided and updated by third parties including the respective institutions. While the institutions are able to update their information at any time, the information is not independently validated, and no party associated with this website can accept responsibility for its accuracy.