Common Ground: Locating Solidarities in the Francophone Postcolonial World
Conference registration form: click here
Friday 12th June 2026, CACSSS Seminar Room, University College Cork, and online.
9:00: Coffee, registration
9:15: Welcome address by Laura Kennedy, Patrick Crowley, and Oliver Davis
9:30-10:30: Keynote address by Dr Nicki Frith (University of Edinburgh). Chaired by Patrick Crowley ‘From Recognition to Reparation: The Politics of Solidarity in the French Republic and Beyond’
10:30-11:45: Panel 1: Articulating Solidarity. Chaired by Oliver Davis
– Émilie Hautemont (Tulane University): ‘In Search of an Anticolonial Sisterhood: Gisèle Halimi and Hélène Cixous’s Visions of Identity and Solidarity’
– Amanda Tavares* (Universidade Nova de Lisboa): ‘Reactivating transnational solidarities through audience engagement in recent installations by Zineb Sedira’
– Hanane Bessami* (M’Hamed Bougara of Boumerdes University): ‘The Representation of Solidarity in Post/Colonial Algeria in Djamal Amrani’s Sous un tas de décombres’
11:45-13:00: Panel 2: Reframing Solidarity. Chaired by Laura Kennedy
– Rachael Barrett (University of Michigan): ‘The Fédération Française des Eclaireuses and the Limits of Gendered Solidarity, 1931-1954’
– Alison Clare (University of Birmingham): ‘Inviting Rita Felski to the Rasanblaj: Postcritque as a Postcolonial Methodology’
– Lucy Taylor (University of Liverpool): Entwined Memory, Entwined Complicity: Understanding the Complexities of Senegalese Complicity in French Concentrationary Violence (1939-1944) through Debarati Sanyal’s Decolonial Lens of “Memory-in- Complicity”
13:00-14:00: Free time for lunch
114:00-15:15: Panel 3: Solidarities in Postcolonial France. Chaired by Aedín Ní Loingsigh
– Daniel Lightfood (University of St Andrews): ‘French universalism and working-class identity reimagined in Joseph Ponthus’ À La ligne’
– Nick Bartlett (Columbia University): ‘Sembene in Marseille: Radicalism and Labour Solidarities’
– Shirley Le Penne*(Cornell University): ‘Unmaking Political Prisoners in La Santé’
15:15-15:45 Flash presentations. Chaired by Kate Hodgson
Niamh Furlong (University College Cork)
Ellen Cawley (University College Cork)
Aideen Teresa Mitchell (University College Cork)
Delilah Pearson* (University of Oxford)
15:45-16:00: Coffee break
16:00-17:15: Panel 4: Fanonian Approaches. Chaired by Sinan Richards
– Chris Dodd (University of Oxford): ‘‘Réinterroger le sol’: Madness and Common Ungrounding in Fanon and Derrida’
– Sonia Kherif*(M’Hamed Bougara of Boumerdes University): ‘From Frantz Fanon’s Damnés to Lynda Chouiten’s Hair: Satirizing Postcolonial Algerian Alienation’
– Chloé Luu* (University of Southern California): ‘Hashish and Fanonian Filiations: Vietnamese-Algerian Revolutionary Intimacies Reimagined in Nguyen’s The Committed’
17:15-18:30: Vin d’Honneur , opportunity to network
18:30: End of Conference
*online presentation
