Scholar Alexandre Dauge-Roth will give a lecture, "Auto-Documenting the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda: The Testimonial Encounter within the Cinema of Me," Monday, Nov. 11, at 6:30 p.m. in 315 Phillips Hall on the University of Iowa campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Dauge-Roth is an associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Bates College in Maine. His scholarship explores the social tensions between personal memory and collective trauma through testimonial literature, cinema, and documentary films. He has also studied social exclusion and inclusion in the context of the AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa through the works of Koulsy Lamko and Fanta Regina Nacro.

His lecture will focus on the first person documentaries of Gilbert Ndahayo and Daddy De Maximo, two survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Their works, Beyond the Deadly Pit and By the Shortcut, give audiences an unprecedented representation of the men as witnesses and as survivors.

Dauge-Roth will use their films to explore the voices of survivors within the Gacaca court, a Rwandan judicial process developed in response to the genocide, and born out of traditional communal law. He will also address the writing of history within the national reunification process.

The lecture is sponsored by the Department of English, the Department of French and Italian in the Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It is also sponsored by the African Studies Program in International Programs, the Center for Human Rights in the College of Law, and the European Studies Group and Circulating Cultures Working Group in the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, contact Marie Kruger in advance at 319-335-3121 or at marie-kruger@uiowa.edu.