SFPS Monthly Mailing: July 2017

SFPS Monthly Mailing: July 2017

1. Calls for Papers

1.1 Postgrads Against Slavery: The Workshop (Deadline: 3 August)

1.2 ‘Travel, Text and Image’: 11th Liverpool Travel Seminar (Deadline: 18 August)

1.3 Curating the Global Archive: Symposium (Deadline: 31 August)

1.4 Sous les pavés: Colloque International des Études Françaises et Francophones des 20ème et 21ème siècles (Deadline: 15 September)

1.5 59th Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies (Deadline: 22 September)

1.6 The Refugee between Aesthetics and Politics, Past and Present: Panel at NeMLA 2018 (Deadline: 30 September)

 

2. Job Opportunities

2.1 Assistant Professor in Modern French Politics and Culture, University of Warwick (Closing date: 13 August)

2.2 Assistant Professor in French and Translation Studies, University of Warwick (Closing date: 13 August)

2.3 Associate Tutor in French, University of Surrey (Closing date: 14 August)

 

3. Announcements

3.1 Historians Against Slavery Biennial Conference 2017 (7-8 October)

 

4. New Titles

4.1 Staging Creoloization: Women’s Theater and Performance from the French Caribbean (University of Virginia Press, 2017)

4.2 The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean (Combined Academic Publishers, 2017)

4.3 Fighting Words: Fifteen Books that Shaped the Postcolonial World (Peter Lang, 2017)

4.4 To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

 

1. Calls for Papers/Contributions

1.1 Postgrads Against Slavery: The Workshop

Human enslavement is not a new phenomenon, nor was it extinguished with legal abolition as many believed. In a purportedly post-emancipation age, this workshop will consider slavery and antislavery throughout history and today, the growth of research in the area, and the future of this field of scholarship. Connecting past and present, we will reflect on the research of the next generation of antislavery scholars and the contribution that we can make to contemporary efforts to end the enslavement of 46 million people worldwide.

The workshop invites UK-based and international postgraduate researchers studying topics relating to slavery, antislavery, and human trafficking to engage in discussion about their research, explore disciplinary and inter-disciplinary issues and approaches, and become part of a growing network of post-graduate and early career researchers working in the area.

This workshop is funded and organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Antislavery Usable Past project (Universities of Nottingham and Hull) and the Centre for the Study of International Slavery (University of Liverpool).

Postgraduate researchers will be given the opportunity to present their research in a ‘Pecha Kucha’ session. Participants will be given 5 minutes to provide an overview of their research, with the opportunity for further discussion in the table sessions.

We are issuing a call for participants in any field or discipline researching issues relating to slavery, antislavery, and human trafficking – both modern and historic. Funding is available for travel expenses and one night’s accommodation in Liverpool (Friday 6 October).

If you wish to participate, please submit a summary of your research (750 words) and a short bio (300 words) to antislaverypgrn@gmail.com before 3 August 2017. Applicants accepted for funding will be notified by 18 August 2017.

For more information, see http://nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_17055.

 

1.2 ‘Travel, Text and Image’: 11th Liverpool Travel Seminar

‘Travel, Text and Image’: Liverpool, 23rd September, 2017.

The eleventh annual Liverpool Travel Seminar – a collaboration between University of Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University and Liverpool John Moores University.

The Liverpool Travel Seminar is a collaborative and interdisciplinary research forum launched jointly by Liverpool Hope University, the University of Liverpool, and Liverpool John Moores University in 2007. It provides a constructive environment in which colleagues from Liverpool’s universities with interests in travel and travel writing discuss the latest developments in their fields whilst reflecting on possible future directions. The Seminar provides a cross- and inter-disciplinary research infrastructure, permitting cross-institutional dialogue and research collaboration in Liverpool itself. At the same time, it aims to expand national and international networks of scholars working on travel and associated fields.

This year’s symposium – dedicated to ‘Travel, Text and Image’ – will take place on Saturday 23rd September, 2017. The Keynote speaker is photographer Frédéric Lecloux, currently Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the University of Nottingham, who will be speaking about his work including a recent project tracing the travels of Nicolas Bouvier in Nepal.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers which address the general themes of travel, text and image, including (but certainly not limited to) studies of travel photography, book illustrations, carnets de voyage, cartography, posters and other visual ephemera, rhetorical strategies including ekphrasis, the iconographic potential of the digital… We welcome papers from diverse disciplinary perspectives, exploring a variety of theoretical frameworks, cultural contexts and historical periods.

For further details, please contact the Seminar organisers: Professor Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool; craf@liv.ac.uk); Dr. Zoe Kinsley (Liverpool Hope University; kinslez@hope.ac.uk) or Dr. Kate Walchester (Liverpool John Moores University; K.A.Walchester@ljmu.ac.uk).

Please send abstracts of 300 words and a bio of no more than 60 words by August 18th, 2017.

For more information, see http://translating.hypotheses.org/776.

 

1.3 Curating the Global Archive: Symposium

Venue: Moving Image Archive, Kelvin Hall, Glasgow

Date: 28 October 2017

In 2017 Africa in Motion film festival collaborates with Glasgow University and the University of Stirling on a year-long AHRC-funded project entitled Africa’s Lost Classics. This project aims to bring to UK screens some of the greatest African film classics, works that have been neglected or forgotten. Through this project, contacts with archivists around the world have lead to discoveries of films that were deemed lost, and collaborations with restorers have brought old and decaying film reels back to life. As such, curators can re(dis)cover old films and transform films’ material deterioration into the cinematic experience the film was made for.

During Black History Month in the UK in October 2017, we are also curating a large exhibition entitled African Art: Looking Back Through the Lens at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. Curated in conjunction with the Africa in Motion film festival and the symposium, this exhibition is motivated by the desire to revive lost histories, spaces and times, and it includes 15 key classic films accompanied by posters, contextual information and film clips.

By organizing, as part of this project, a 1-day symposium on curating the global archive, we aim to place African cinema at the centre of the global film archive, while providing a context of worldwide archival curation and research.

We invite scholars to submit abstracts on topics related to practical and theoretical uses of worldwide film archives, and the relationship between archives and curation. We are interested in the archives of the world: from the Balkans to the Far East, and from Beirut to Seattle. Without wanting to limit the scope of the symposium or abstracts, some of the central questions we wish to explore are:

• What is the role of the curator in bringing the archive to life?
• How do archives and festivals perform as sites of memory and commemoration?
• Can festivals act as archives?
• How do we best access archives if the materiality of film is under threat?
• What has the digital revolution contributed to the preservation of cinema?
• What is the role of the archivist in curating retrospectives?
• How do history and the present enact the discourse between contemporary films and archival footage?
• How do films, archives and the cinema as a public space interact with the present and the future, and what is the archive’s role in preservation and access?

Please send 250-word abstracts and 100-word biographies (including relevant publications) to the conference organisers Dr. Lizelle Bisshoff at Lizelle.Bisschoff@glasgow.ac.uk and Dr. Stefanie Van de Peer at Stefanie.Vandepeer@glasgow.ac.uk by 31 August 2017. Delegates will be notified of their acceptance by 15 September.

We regret we have no funding available for travel or accommodation but delegates will have the opportunity to visit film screenings of restored African Classics at the Africa in Motion film festival (27/10 – 5/11) in Glasgow and/or Edinburgh.

About the venue: The Moving Image Archive is Scotland’s national collection of moving image located at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. More than 2,000 digitised films are online in the Moving Image Archive catalogue, and a further archive of over 60,000 films about Scotland is being preserved at Kelvin Hall. These archives are accessible by booking an appointment with the manager of the Archive, please see online for more details.

 

1.4 Sous les pavés: Colloque International des Études Françaises et Francophones des 20ème et 21ème siècles

12-14 avril 2018 – Brown University

Le cinquantenaire de mai ‘68 fournit l’occasion de ressaisir ce qui en ces événements tenait d’un “phénomène de voyance, comme si une société voyait tout d’un coup ce qu’elle contenait d’intolérable et voyait aussi la possibilité d’autre chose” (Deleuze et Guattari). “Sous les pavés, la plage !”, parmi d’autres slogans de mai ’68, formulait le souhait d’une transformation des possibles subjectifs et sociaux, et le vœu d’un monde autre. Composant avec “le pavé et le poème” (de Certeau), le mouvement de mai donnait à penser l’alliance du geste critique et du geste créateur, des projets artistiques et philosophiques et des programmes activistes. À une époque—la nôtre—où se remobilisent les résistances face aux formes dominantes, et où se réinventent les pratiques d’opposition face aux forces du pouvoir, du capital, ou encore du “spectaculaire intégré” (Debord), il convient de porter notre réflexion sur cet autre héritage qu’aura été celui du siècle 1918-2018—siècle aussi de la critique, des contre-cultures, des solidarités, des lucidités résistantes, mineures, “autres”, défaites ou insoumises. Sous les pavés : formule laissée ouverte, manière d’inviter la réflexion sur tout ce qu’ont pu signifier lutter, contester, s’insurger, s’allier, rêver, réimaginer en ce siècle—en littérature, en art, en politique, dans la pensée critique et les modes de vie—et la force que cela peut avoir encore, n’oubliant pas que “ce qui attache est aussi ce qui fait penser” (Stengers).

Invitées : Maylis de Kerangal, Isabelle Stengers

Les propositions de communications sont les bienvenues dans les domaines des littératures en français, de la théorie critique, des études culturelles, de genre et postcoloniales, des arts, du cinéma et de la photographie. Plusieurs axes de recherches peuvent être envisagés :

• Rapports entre littérature/art/philosophie et politique
• Pensées du commun et du collectif, contre-cultures, formes de résistance
• Théories et critiques de la société de consommation, du spectacle
• Analyses des structures et relations de pouvoir et/ou de classe
• Pensées et politiques d’altérité, de multiplicité, de différence, d’immanence
• Reconceptualisations du travail, de la vie quotidienne, de l’espace urbain
• Critiques du sujet, de l’identité, des institutions
• Pensées anti-colonialistes, féministes, écologistes, anti-capitalistes, alter-mondialistes
• Utopies, pensées d’un monde autre et modes de penser autrement
• Crises anciennes, crises nouvelles, critiques en criseLes propositions de communications (250 mots maximum, en anglais ou en français, accompagnées d’une brève notice bio-bibliographique), et de sessions complètes—celles-ci vivement encouragées—sont à envoyer à l’adresse colloque2018@gmail.com

Date limite d’envoi des propositions : 15 septembre 2017

Comité scientifique : Hannah Freed-Thall, Justin Izzo, Thangam Ravindranathan, David Wills (BrownUniversity), et Lionel Ruffel (Université Paris 8)

*****

“Sous les pavés”: 20^th– and 21^st-Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium

April 12-14, 2018 – Brown University

The fiftieth anniversary of May ’68 offers the opportunity to reflect on what many experienced as a “visionary phenomenon—as if a society suddenly saw what was intolerable in it and also saw the possibility for something else” (Deleuze and Guattari). Like other ’68 slogans, “Sous les pavés, la plage!” expressed the desire to transform subjectivities and social structures, the longing for a different  world. By way of “the paving stone and the poem” (de Certeau), the May movement generated alliances between creative and critical work, and among artistic, philosophical, and activist projects. Today, as forms of resistance once again take shape, and as new ways of opposing power, capital, and “integrated spectacle” (Debord) emerge, it is important to consider the alternative legacies of 1918-2018–­ a century of critique, of countercultures, solidarities, of radical, minor, other modes of thought, defeated or defiant. Sous les pavés: an open-ended invitation to reflect on all that protest, struggle, insurrection, community, dreaming, and reimagining have meant over the last hundred years—in literature, art, politics, critical theory and everyday life—and on the moving power these practices might still have, since “that which gathers together makes us think” (Stengers).

Invited speakers : Maylis de Kerangal, Isabelle Stengers

We welcome abstracts from a variety of fields: French-language literature, critical theory, cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonialstudies, cinema studies, and the history of art, among others. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

• relations between literature/art/philosophy and the political
• approaches to the common and the collective, counter-cultures, forms of resistance
• theories and critiques of spectacle and consumer society
• analyses of structures and relations of power and/or class
• the politics of alterity, multiplicity, difference, immanence
• reconceptualizations of work, everyday life, urban space
• critiques of the subject, of identity, of institutions
• anti-colonialism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, alter-globalization
• utopian, contestatory, dissident reinventions of thought or world
• crisis, old and new; critique in crisis

Abstracts (250 words maximum, in English or French, accompanied by a brief bio), and complete panels—which are strongly encouraged—can be sent to colloque2018@gmail.com.

Deadline for abstracts: September 15, 2017

Committee: Hannah Freed-Thall, Justin Izzo, Thangam Ravindranathan, David Wills (Brown University), and Lionel Ruffel (Université Paris 8)

 

1.5 59th Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies

The 58th Annual conference of the Society for French Studies was hosted by Durham University, and took place on 3-5 July 2017. The Society would like to thank all delegates, our four keynote speakers, and colleagues at Durham for making the event such a success. We will be making some photos from the conference and recordings of the plenary lectures available as soon as possible.

Our 59th Annual conference will be held at University College Cork, 2-4 July 2018. The call for papers is available here (in English) and here (in French). Please send abstracts by 22 September 2017 to the Conference Officer, Dr Nina Parish, at the following address: sfsconf2018@gmail.com.

For more information, see http://www.sfs.ac.uk/conferences/.

 

1.6  The Refugee between Aesthetics and Politics, Past and Present: Panel at NeMLA 2018

The 49th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association will meet April 12 to 15, 2018, and will feature approximately 400 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Every year, this event affords NeMLA’s principal opportunity to carry on a tradition of lively research and pedagogical exchange in language and literature.

The theme of this year’s convention is “Global Spaces, Local Landscapes and Imagined Worlds.” We seek to examine the concept of spaces: their appropriation and occupation, the demarcation of borders, processes of inclusivity and exclusivity, as well as reproductive processes related to the creation of worlds—real, fantastic, and imagined. Pittsburgh, a city whose recent cultural explosion attracts visitors from around the United States and the world, provides the ideal backdrop for such thought-provoking topics. For more information, see https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html.

Considering the hyper-mediatization of the ‘refugee crisis’ and the spotlight on global and local migration flows, this seminar addresses depictions of refugees, past and present, in cultural production, including visual arts, literature, theatre and cinema. From the documentary Fuocoammare by Gianfranco Rosi to the comic book project100 Dessins pour Haïti; from Fethi Sahraoui’s photographs of Saharawi refugee camps to Néhémy Pierre-Dahomey’s novel Rapatriés, the refugee has long captured the artistic imagination through transcultural perspectives.

A central preoccupation of these varied art forms is the political power of nation states and international organizations that regulate the rights of the displaced. Therefore, this seminar will focus its study of refugee experiences between aesthetic representation and political discourse. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, the universalist claim is made that all human beings from all regions of the world are entitled to equal protection and fundamental freedoms. Yet these rights are restricted to individuals and groups within nation states; the refugee moves within and beyond national borders in a migration, as the late Haitian writer Jean-Claude Charles wrote, “almost intransitive, a departure born of a rift and an arrival always deferred.”

This seminar invites contributions that reflect on the possibilities and limitations of art, news media, literature and cinema to represent regional and global migration flows, while also highlighting singular stories among huddled masses. By way of a transnational and diachronic approach, we aim for a more comprehensive look at an array of artistic forms in multiple settings.

Contributions to the seminar should focus on artistic representations of present-day migrants and refugees or on historical contexts that may shed light on the current displacement and marginalization of various populations. We welcome papers at the intersection of aesthetics and politics that take up a range of questions related to the figure of the refugee, including national identity and the construction of alterity, human rights and asylum, migration and climate change, and military intervention and humanitarian aid.

Please send proposals of no more than 200 words by September 30, 2017 using the NeMLA Submission Portal and searching the panel by title: https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers.html.

If you encounter any difficulties, contact the panel chairs Dr. John Walsh at JPW64@pitt.edu or Jennifer Boum Make at jeb235@pitt.edu.

 

2. Job Opportunities

2.1 Assistant Professor in Modern French Politics and Culture, University of Warwick

University of Warwick – School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Location:	Coventry
Salary:	£39,324 to £46,925 per annum
Hours:	Full Time
Contract Type:	Permanent

We are looking to appoint an outstanding Assistant Professor in Modern French Politics and Culture. Applications are invited in any area of French Studies post 1900 although preference may be given to candidates with the following specialisms: French political thought, French politics and Society, French international relations, France and globalization. You will be expected to teach and supervise undergraduate and postgraduate students to the highest standard, and to teach French language. You will be expected to participate as appropriate in the administration of the department’s activities.

You will have a PhD or equivalent in French Studies or cognate discipline and an excellent command of spoken and written French and English. A proven research record and trajectory are essential. You will have the ability to convert excellent and innovative research into the highest-quality published work, and have the potential to initiate and manage successful research funding bids. You will have experience of undergraduate teaching and the ability and willingness to support curriculum development in French Studies and, where appropriate, across the School.

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Head of French Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, p-p.fraiture@warwick.ac.uk and Professor Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Head of School, Alison.Menezes@warwick.ac.uk.

Closing date: 13 August 2017

For more information, see http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BCO424/assistant-professor-in-modern-french-politics-and-culture-74606-077/.

 

2.2 Assistant Professor in French and Translation Studies, University of Warwick 

School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick

We are looking to appoint an outstanding Assistant Professor in French and Translation Studies. We especially welcome applications from candidates with a proven record of addressing cultural and theoretical dimensions of translation across national, state, continental, imperial and colonial borders, in any time period. You will play a full part in School and department activity, with a particular remit to develop and help to deliver degree-level quality provision in translation and transcultural studies, for the School.

You will have a proven record of achievement in research, with a developing international reputation. You will have clear potential for, or demonstrated excellence in, producing world-leading publications in an area relevant to the post. You will have undergraduate teaching experience; and experience of, or the potential to engage in, postgraduate teaching. You will be expected to develop high-quality bids for external research funding, and to demonstrate a commitment to achieving non-academic impact. You will participate as appropriate in the administration of the department or School.

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Head of French Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, p-p.fraiture@warwick.ac.uk and Professor Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Head of School, Alison.Menezes@warwick.ac.uk

Job Description

To undertake research, teaching, curriculum development, and administrative and other activities that support and enhance the work, reputation and success of French Studies and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Research

1. To contribute to the School’s profile as a leading international research centre by pursuing appropriate research of the highest quality.
2. To publish appropriate research outcomes of the highest quality with publishers of international standing.
3. To present research findings and papers at academic conferences, and to support and promote the School’s research ambitions through strong internal and external engagement and visibility.
4. To bid for external funding for appropriate research activities.

Teaching

1. To undertake teaching at all levels, including for postgraduate taught and research degrees, and including language teaching, within your home department and for the School.
2. To attract, support, and successfully supervise postgraduate students.
3. To support the School’s ongoing review and development of the curriculum at all levels, and especially in the area of translation and transcultural studies.
4. To undertake teaching-related academic tasks (e.g. setting examination papers and essay questions, marking, collecting student feedback through questionnaires, invigilation and pastoral support of students) required to sustain the delivery of high-quality teaching.
5. To support, and comply with, University and departmental teaching quality assurance standards and procedures, through the provision of such information as may be required by the School or the University.

Administration and Other Activities

1. To undertake departmental roles and management functions which may be required by the Head of department or School, including attendance at departmental meetings and participation in other committees and groups within the department, the School, the Faculty, and the University.
2. To engage in continuous professional development, including participation in relevant professional activities.
3. To undertake as appropriate external commitments which enhance the reputation of the department and the School.

The duties and responsibilities outlined are intended not to be an exhaustive list but rather to indicate the main aspects of the post. The post holder will be required to be flexible in undertaking duties.

Person Specification

The Person Specification focuses on the knowledge, skills, experience and qualifications required to undertake the role effectively. This is measured by (a) Application Form, (b) Test/Exercise, (c) Interview, (d) Presentation.

Essential Criteria

2:1 honours degree or equivalent in French Studies or a cognate discipline.(a)

PhD or equivalent in any area of French Studies or a cognate discipline.(a)

Competency in IT.(a)

Clear potential for, or demonstrated excellence in, producing world-leading publications in an area relevant to the post. (a),(c)

Proven record of achievement in research, with a developing international reputation.(a),(c)

Ability to generate high-quality bids for external research funding and to support funded research projects.(a),(c)

Ability to demonstrate a commitment to achieving non-academic impact.(a),(c)

Specialisation in a relevant area of French Studies.(a),(c),(d)

Ability to support the development and delivery of degree-level quality provision in translation and transcultural studies, for the School.(a),(c),(d)

Ability to teach undergraduate and postgraduate students in lectures, tutorials, seminars and practical classes, including language classes in French Studies.(a),(c),(d)

Ability to take responsibility for the effective and efficient delivery of teaching programmes.(a),(c)

Excellent command, spoken and written, of both English and French, and effective communication and presentation skills.(a),(c),(d)

Good interpersonal skills.(c),(d)

Ability to work independently and as part of a team on research and teaching programmes, and to initiate, plan, organise, implement and deliver programmes of work.(a),(c)

Ability to participate in the administration of the department or School.(a),(c)

Desirable Criteria

Engagement in continuous professional development.(a),(c)

Proven experience in Higher Education.(a),(c)

Evidence of excellence in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.(a),(c)

Closing Date: 13 August 2017

For more information, see https://www.iatis.org/index.php/news/job-announcements/item/1517-assistant-professor-in-french-and-translation-studies.

 

2.3 Associate Tutor in French, University of Surrey

University of Surrey – School of English and Languages

Location:	Guildford
Salary:	£38.00 per hour
Hours:	Part Time
Contract Type:	Permanent
Closes:	14th August 2017

The School of English and Languages brings together the academic disciplines of English literature, creative writing, modern languages, linguistics, and translation studies. The School also offers evening language classes for staff and the general public and an institution-wide language programme which gives all students in the University the opportunity to study a language, irrespective of their degree scheme, and leads to the Global Graduate Award in Languages.

The School of English and Languages is looking for a part-time Associate Tutor to teach French on its Global Graduate Award programme and the evening language programme to start w/c 2 October, 2017. Teaching required for the role is as follows:

GGA classes (£38 per hour plus holiday pay)

4 hours per week over 19 weeks (Wednesday afternoon)

Evening classes (£36 per hour plus holiday pay)

1.5 hours per week over 24 weeks (3 terms)

Applicants should hold a first degree, a teaching qualification, and have teaching experience. A Masters degree and a background in teaching in the Higher Education sector would be an advantage.

For informal enquiries please email Christa Saller (c.saller@surrey.ac.uk) or phone on 01483 682864.

For more information, see http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BCS751/associate-tutor-in-french/.

 

3. Announcements

3.1  Historians Against Slavery Biennial Conference 2017 (7-8 October)

October 7-8, 10am-4.30pm
International Slavery Museum, Liverpool

Online Conference Registration

Program & Abstracts Print Friendly Program (PDF)

This year, Historians Against Slavery (HAS) is holding its biennial conference outside of the United States for the first time, at the International Slavery Museum (ISM) in Liverpool. The two-day conference is part of a series of events during the 10th Anniversary of the ISM and also marks UK Black History Month 2017. It is co-hosted by HAS, the ISM, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery (University of Liverpool) and the Antislavery Usable Past project (Universities of Nottingham and Hull).

Connecting past with present, we will deepen dialogue and collaboration between scholars, teachers, activists and community representatives, and build coalitions for antislavery scholarship and activism. We bring together a distinguished body of leading scholars, museum professionals and antislavery activists from around the world, reflecting on cutting-edge scholarship and debating practical examples of how history can inform contemporary efforts to end the enslavement of 46 million people worldwide.

Registration for the conference is free and includes lunch on both days. Conference attendees are responsible for transportation, lodging and evening meals.

For more information, including the conference programme, see: http://www.historiansagainstslavery.org/main/2017-conference-october-7-8-2017/.

 

4. New Titles

4.1 Staging Creoloization: Women’s Theater and Performance from the French Caribbean (University of Virginia Press, 2017)

By Emily Sahakian

In Staging Creolization, Emily Sahakian examines seven plays by Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, Gerty Dambury, and Simone Schwarz-Bart that premiered in the French Caribbean or in France in the 1980s and 1990s and soon thereafter traveled to the United States. Sahakian argues that these late-twentieth-century plays by French Caribbean women writers dramatize and enact creolization—the process of cultural transformation through mixing and conflict that occurred in the context of the legacies of slavery and colonialism.

Sahakian here theorizes creolization as a performance-based process, dramatized by French Caribbean women’s plays and enacted through their international production and reception histories. The author contends that the syncretism of the plays is not a static, fixed creole aesthetics but rather a dynamic process of creolization in motion, informed by history and based in the African-derived principle that performance is a space of creativity and transformation that connects past, present, and future.

For more information, see http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4992.

 

4.2 The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean (Combined Academic Publishers, 2017)

By Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

The writer Gabriel Audisio once called the Mediterranean a “liquid continent.” Taking up the challenge issued by Audisio’s phrase, Edwige Tamalet Talbayev insists that we understand the region on both sides of the Mediterranean through a “transcontinental” heuristic. Rather than merely read the Maghreb in the context of its European colonizers from across the Mediterranean, Talbayev compellingly argues for a transmaritime deployment of the Maghreb across the multiple Mediterranean sites to which it has been materially and culturally bound for millennia.

Studying a Mediterranean-inspired body of texts from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Gibraltar in French, Arabic, and Spanish, the book delivers provocative analyses that complicate the dichotomy between nation and Mediterranean, the valence of the postcolonial topos of nomadism in the face of postcolonial trauma, and conceptions of the Mediterranean as a mythical site averse to historical realization. In place of Albert Camus’ colonialist Mediterranean utopia, Talbayev substitutes a trans-Mediterranean reading of Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma as an allegory of the Maghreb’s longstanding plurality.

Through this adjusted Mediterranean genealogy, The Transcontinental Maghreb reveals these Mediterranean imaginaries to intersect with Maghrebi claims to an inclusive, democratic national ideal yet to be realized. Attuned to both the perpetual fluctuation of the Mediterranean as method and the political imperatives specific to the postcolonial Maghreb, the transcontinental reveals the limits of models of hybridity and nomadism oblivious to material realities. Through a sustained reflection on allegory and critical melancholia, the book shows how the Mediterranean decenters postcolonial nation-building projects and mediates the nomadic subject’s reinsertion into a national collective respectful of heterogeneity. In engaging the space of the sea, the hybridity it produces, and the way it has shaped such historical dynamics as globalization, imperialism, decolonization, and nationalism, the book rethinks the very nature of postcolonial histories and identities along its shores.

For more information, see http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-transcontinental-maghreb.

 

4.3 Fighting Words: Fifteen Books that Shaped the Postcolonial World (Peter Lang, 2017)

By Dominic Davies, Erica Lombard and Benjamin Mountford

Can a book change the world? If books were integral to the creation of the imperial global order, what role have they played in resisting that order throughout the twentieth century? To what extent have theories and movements of anti-imperial and anticolonial resistance across the planet been shaped by books as they are read across the world? Fighting Words responds to these questions by examining how the book as a cultural form has fuelled resistance to empire in the long twentieth century. Through fifteen case studies that bring together literary, historical and book historical perspectives, this collection explores the ways in which books have circulated anti-imperial ideas, as they themselves have circulated as objects and commodities within regional, national and transnational networks. What emerges is a complex portrait of the vital and multifaceted role played by the book in both the formation and the form of anticolonial resistance, and the development of the postcolonial world.

For more information, see https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/11413.

 

4.4 To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

By Lorelle Semley

The Haitian Revolution may have galvanized subjects of French empire in the Americas and Africa struggling to define freedom and ‘Frenchness’ for themselves, but Lorelle Semley reveals that this event was just one moment in a longer struggle of women and men of colour for rights under the French colonial regime. Through political activism ranging from armed struggle to literary expression, these colonial subjects challenged and exploited promises in French Republican rhetoric that should have contradicted the continued use of slavery in the Americas and the introduction of exploitative labour in the colonisation of Africa. They defined an alternative French citizenship, which recognised difference, particularly race, as part of a ‘universal’ French identity. Spanning Atlantic port cities in Haiti, Senegal, Martinique, Benin, and France, this book is a major contribution to scholarship on citizenship, race, empire, and gender, and it sheds new light on debates around human rights and immigration in contemporary France.

• A new vision of French citizenship which will appeal to scholars interested in Africa, the Americas, and the French Empire
• Demonstrates the connections between historical context and the history of cities by integrating urban studies into the narrative of the French Atlantic
• Applies the concept of gender as well as that of race to the issue of French identity and citizenship

For more information, see: http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/be-free-and-french-citizenship-frances-atlantic-empire#ypQqRJ6kmmFYHkmF.99.