Course description: This course takes students on a cultural journey across the African continent and the Caribbean as we explore the relationship between the textual, the visual, and the sonic in the Francophone world (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, and the two Congos). Using the lens of hybridity and cultural métissage, we will examine the ways in which sound and rhythm are rendered and reverberate through literary texts, as well as through still and moving images, in the works of various writers, artists, and thinkers as they negotiate and reimagine expressions of their cultural identities. Students will gain an understanding of how the interplay between text, image, and sound functions as a dynamic mode for reshaping (neo)colonial dynamics between France and its former colonies, while serving as a critical site of cultural métissage in the 20th-century Global South.
Readings: Gisèle Pineau, Aimé Césaire, Alain Mabanckou, Djibril Tamsir Niane, Jean Bernabé, Raphaël Confiant, and Patrick Chamoiseau. Music selections: Kassav’, PBS, Magic System, Lougah François, Maître Gims, Aya Nakamura, and Joséphine Baker.
Course Learning Goals:
- Critically analyze literature, film, music, and multimedia works from diverse Francophone regions.
- Gain an understanding of how text, image, and sound intersect in expressions of identity in the francophone world
- Examine how colonial histories and global movements have shaped identities in the Francophone world
- Develop critical reading, analytical writing, and oral communication skills through revision-based writing assignments, class discussions, oral presentations, and in-class writing assignments.
Grading Policy:
Active Class Participation and Attendance: 20%
Three short essays (+ rewrites): 20%
Weekly in-class assignments (short reflections + quizzes): 20%
Oral presentation: 10%
Creative Final Project: 30 %
No prerequisites
Language of Instruction: English
Course URL: A Canvas site will be available.
Course Materials: A course reader and additional material will be provided