Texts:

See below.

Course Description:

For almost a century, francophone writers have been concerned with the various cultural, political, and economic dynamics that shape the experiences of colonial and postcolonial subjects who travel into and out of France.  In this seminar, we will read and discuss several texts, dating from the 1930s onward, that foreground movement to (and from) the metropole.  Over the course of the semester, we will consider a number of interrelated questions: how do these texts reflect the profound psychic ruptures and geographic displacements that shape colonial and postcolonial subjectivity?  What sorts of challenges do they pose to narratives of French national and cultural identity?  How do they transform concepts of “home” and “nation,” “citizen” and “foreigner,” “French” and “francophone”?  What forms of agency (or lack thereof) underlie these metropolitan itineraries?  How do the terms within which travel to France is imagined shift over time?

In addition to selected theoretical/critical works, readings are likely to include: Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal; Ousmane Socé, Mirages de Paris; Cheik Hamidou Kane, L’aventure ambigüe; Ousmane Sembène, “La noire de…”; Driss Chraïbi, Les boucs; Tahar Ben Jelloun, La réclusion solitaire; Azouz Begag, Le gone du Chaâba; Gisèle Pineau, L’exil selon Julia; Alain Mabanckou, Bleu blanc rouge; Fatou Diome, Le ventre de l’Atlantique; Bessora, 53cm

Section times and locations in the Schedule of Classes