This course will examine the literature and film of non-western groups that have experienced disruption in their familiar social, political and cultural lives due to a cataclysmic historical event. The regional content of the course will vary from semester to semester, but it will focus on a moment of rupture which affected geographical borders and/or international relations, and individual consciousness. Literary and cinematic responses to these major historical shifts often involve reconciling old and new identities, old and new national loyalties, first and second languages, as well as eastern and western, ancient and modern, local and global perspectives. Areas of possible interest include South and East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some examples of such defining historical moments are: the republican revolution in China, the Tiananmen Square uprising, the Partition of India, the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, and the DMZ in Korea--all of which provoked a literature and film of crisis.