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The Myth of National Purity:  Who Writes the Story of Who Belongs?

Instructor
Cora Bresciano
FPL12133
Video Catch-up
Available

Course Description

The stories we're told about various groups of people can have a profound effect on our opinion and treatment of those people. That's why governments in many eras and countries have used myth to label various groups as "pure" and worthy of belonging—or as "undesirable" and deserving of elimination. Political myths enable leaders to gain agreement from the populace that it's best to "disappear" these undesirables from the story of the nation. In their turn, though, writers who explore those times and places in their fiction can use their own myths to re-inscribe the missing people into the story of the world. In this session, we'll look at the damaging myths that have obscured and the healing myths that have revealed our fellow humans in several places in Europe and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Course Info

  • Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Date: Monday, December 13
  • Location: Friedberg Auditorium, Lifelong Learning Building
  • Fees: Member - $30
    $75 for any combination of three events, members only
    Non-member - $35
    One-time guest pass, Member or Non-member at the door - $35.

About the Instructor

  • Dr. Cora Bresciano was the co-founder and, for fourteen years, the executive director of Blue Planet Global Education, a non-profit organization that coached educators on creating international writing-and-arts collaborations. She was also a Visiting Instructor at FAU, teaching myth and magical realism in literature along with creative and first-year writing. She lectures and presents in the U.S. and abroad, recently in Lisbon at the Modern Language Association International Symposium. Dr. Bresciano holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies from FAU, with specializations in literature and 20th century Spanish history. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from FAU, where she received the Frank and Courtney Brogan Award in Fiction, and a bachelor's degree in music education from Hofstra University in New York.