Arts and social sciences (Marc Bloch Seminar)

The aim is to compare sociological theories on asylum at the counter, ethnographies already carried out on the subject in France and Germany, and the way these same phenomena are represented and staged in contemporary European cinema. The challenge of this seminar on the relationship between the arts and the social sciences is therefore to articulate the way in which the social sciences see artistic domains such as music or cinema, by reflecting in particular on the paths, biographies and careers (Zimmermann, 2013) of artists and, reciprocally, the way in which theoretical studies in the arts seize certain methodological tools specific to the social sciences, so as to renew the analysis of works by associating reflections of an aesthetic nature with reflections of a socio-economic, socio-political or socio-historical nature (Zabunyan, 2012). Conjointly, it is also a question of being interested in the way in which the artists themselves seize certain tools specific to the ethnographic field investigation to produce works (Caillet, 2019). By taking as a starting point of our reflexion our respective fields of research, we will study texts drawn from specific theoretical frameworks - the Border Studies and the studies on the documentary cinema in particular - and certain methodological frameworks like ethnography; thus including the participant observation, or observant participation, the various forms of interviews, or the notion of reflexivity.