Department of French and Italian

Paraphrasing Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism we can say that "Racial and colonial discourses are an integral but unacknowledged part of contemporary literature in French.” The modern emergence of colonial discourses, racialist and racist, exotic, driven by fantasies of conquest and domination as well as anxieties of identity, alienation, and belonging, prompted the rise of anti-colonial and postcolonial reactions which contested the West's claims to literary universalism, dismantled Orientalism, and developed specific practices and situated theories. The seminar will study this dynamic in the French-speaking world (Metropolitan France, North-Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and Canada) by examining literary and critical texts that engage with national traditions, relational reading models, and theorizations or obfuscations of race and colonialism. Most readings will be provided via Canvas.

FRIT-F 667      #29520     (3)    Th      4:00 P-6:00 P      Prof Oana Panaite