Bulletin N°400
Subject: ON ALTERNATIVE COURSES TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GRENOBLE DURING THE NATIONAL STRIKE.
21 March 2009
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
French universities have been on strike for many weeks now, and the University of Grenoble initiated the "printemps de chaises" two weeks ago. During this time there have been many "cours alternatifs" taught on and off campus, as the "Strike Agenda" below indicates :
Item B. is a series of videos made during the two alternative courses I conducted on the trams in Grenoble.
On Wednesday, 4 March and again on 18 March, my American Studies class held our "cours altenatif" in trams. There we discussed, as we often do on campus, issues in texts dealing with economic inequality in the USA, as well as Slavery, the Genocide of Amerindians. Racism, the concepts of Democracy, the oppression of Women, etc. . . . In this two day period we spent more than 4 hours on the trams in Grenoble, and we filmed about one hour of discussions in which we often engaged non-students in conversations about our topics, to diminish the "town-and-gown" divide which oppresses everyone. Our efforts were rather successful. . . .
We invite you to take a look at this series of very short videos, and to leave your comments on their individual contents.