Roma/Gypsies in Literature, Pop Culture, and History

Catalog description

Offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the people known as Gypsies (though the preferred term is Roma or Romani), whose ancestors left northern India by the Eleventh century, and who presently live dispersed in a world-wide diaspora. We will examine representations of Gypsies in world literature, pop culture, and history, and investigate this people's position at the confluence of myth, metaphor, and reality. We will discuss the particulars of Roma's history, including origins, migrations, experiences with slavery and the Holocaust, and their position within the New Europe. Special attention will be paid to the relation between historical and non-historical representations, and to the production of stereotypes and tropes associated with Gypsies/Roma.