Throughout most history, poverty has been “spectacular” in both senses of the word: a staggeringly visible social phenomenon and an object of representation. But what are the ethical implications and possibly the limits of turning poverty into spectacle, entertainment and art? This course will examine the twin facets of poverty in social reform writings, sociology, literature, photography and cinema in the anglo-American world, focusing on two distinct moments: the late 19th-century and the present. Social reformer Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (1890) and Stephen Crane's novella Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) are the best-known example of a growing interest in urban poverty in the United States at the time of the great wave of immigration from Europe. Sidewalk (1999), Mitchell Duneier's participant-observer study of New York City panhandlers and the alluring experience of slum tourism provided to global audiences by Danny Boyle's colorful and spectacular Slumdog Millionaire (2008) will provide contemporary counterpoints.
André KAENEL
Atelier
English
Autumn 2022-2023
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890)
Yochelson, Bonnie & David Czitrom. Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York. New York: New Press, 2008