Love in the Time of War

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

How does love emerge under conditions of war? This seminar explores what it means to sustain intimate relations in the face of overwhelming violence. Through the fields of Queer Studies, Black Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Anthropology, this course considers how intimacy and love figure in the production and maintenance of racialized, classed, and gendered difference. Taking up a variety of love relations and attachments (conjugal, sibling, ideological) and how they appear across a range of genres, including ethnography, state documents, memoir, novel, and film, students will examine the conundrums that love raises in the study of conflict. Students will further grapple with the possibilities and limitations of writing about intimacy and war through three written assignments (film review, critical reflection, and speculative ethnography).