How Do We Process the Loss of Our Homes? Professor Jeannette Estruth in Conversation with Filmmaker Swetha Regunathan

Last month, Assistant Professor of History Jeannette Estruth sat down with filmmaker Swetha Regunathan at a virtual event at Bard College. Dr. Regunathan’s work often grapples with homelessness, immigration, exile, and climate change, telling the stories of people misrepresented or underrepresented in American film.

In her introduction to their conversation, Professor Estruth writes, “Regunathan’s films bear out the urgent reality that home—as place and as concept, as shelter and as structure of social belonging, as physiological human need and as place of physical safety—is an economically, structurally, and ecologically precarious idea for increasing numbers of people, especially people of color, women, and young people. When homes disappear or become untenable, people are forced to make new homes, new stories, and new meanings about these places and themselves. Regunathan’s films do the invaluable work of showing us that our past and present dreams of home persuasively compel urgent action today for our collective future.”
 

Post Date: 12-13-2020