COLT 10.28 Children on the Streets
Child homelessness has been viewed as a persistent social problem throughout the modern world. Children living, working, and struggling to survive have been a visible part of the streetscape of New York, London, São Paulo and other major cities, attracting the attention of writers, artists, filmmakers and anthropologists. Some current and former homeless children have also found the means to depict their own experiences with homelessness. In this course we will be examining a wide range of texts featuring homeless children as protagonists. These texts will be an entryway into broader discussions about class, race, and ethnicity; the meaning of citizenship; gender and sexuality, and representations of the modern city. How have artists complicated the relationship between activism and aesthetics? What can we learn from comparing texts of different time periods, genres, and nationalities that treat a similar subject matter? We will be studying a diverse range of materials, including fairy tales, documentaries, novels, and ethnographies from the United States, Brazil, Morocco, England, and elsewhere.
Instructor
Smolin, Jessica