4 Thursdays 4/9-5/6, 3-5:30pm, HSSB 4202
Enrollment Code: 50336
Since reports have surfaced that U.S. troops have been torturing "enemy combatants" at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Bagram Air Base, a debate in the American media has ensued that asks whether state power is justified in violating the sacred nature of human life in the name of a terrorist threat. The focus of this course is to then ask, if the state empowers itself to torture "the enemy," what happens to the status of human rights which serve as the fundamental basis for popular consent. We explore these questions primarily through the presentation of films from different regions of the world matched with readings that attempt to represent the annihilation of life in the name of protecting the citizenry. Please advise that many of the films shown in class may be disturbing. Their sometimes provocative nature is not an excuse for not attending class.
Professor Peter Bloom, Film and Media Studies, his work focuses on French colonialism, pre-cinema technologies, early photography, documentary cinema, contemporary European film, and the history of French anthropology. He is currently publishing a book entitled, Mapping French Colonial Documentary with the University of Minnesota Press, and co-editing a volume on the recent riots in France entitled, Frenchness and the African Diaspora with Indiana University Press. He teaches courses on pre- Cinema, Social Semiotics, French and Francophone Cinema, as well as film history survey courses in the Film and Media Studies Department. He is affiliate faculty in the Department of French and Italian.
