As part of our Speaker Series, Dr. Jean Beaman offers three recommendations in connection with her upcoming talk, “Suspect Citizenship: Rethinking Belonging and Non-belonging in Plural Societies,” on October 28.
Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France by Jean Beaman
While portrayals of immigrants and their descendants in France and throughout Europe often center on burning cars and radical Islam, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France paints a different picture. Through fieldwork and interviews in Paris and its banlieues, Jean Beaman examines middle-class and upwardly mobile children of Maghrébin, or North African immigrants. By showing how these individuals are denied cultural citizenship because of their North African origin, she puts to rest the notion of a French exceptionalism regarding cultural difference, race, and ethnicity and further centers race and ethnicity as crucial for understanding marginalization in French society.
Les Misérables (2019)
Directed by Ladj Ly
104 min • French • Drama
Stéphane, a recent transplant to the impoverished suburb of Montfermeil, joins the local anti-crime squad where he works alongside two unscrupulous colleagues. When an arrest turns unexpectedly violent, the three officers must reckon with the aftermath and keep the neighborhood from spiraling out of control. Inspired by the 2005 Parisian riots, Les Misérables, is from breakout director Ladj Ly.
Undersong – Race and Conversations Other-wise
Hosted by Katucha Bento, Nov 7, 2022
Episode 9 – On transnational Blackness with Jean Beaman and Adam Elliott-Cooper
Katucha Bento speaks to Adam Elliot-Cooper and Jean Beaman about how Blackness travels and takes on different iterations, in different geopolitical contexts. Together, they consider the histories and contingencies of colonialism, and their effects on racialised violence and Blackness in the present.
