"Disaster Writing in the Francophone Islands"
Upper-division seminar exploring comparative creolizations in the Caribbean and Polynesian regions with an emphasis on the philosophy and poetics of Édouard Glissant. From the Port-au-Prince earthquake and regular hurricanes in the Caribbean to the nuclear testing in French Polynesia, catastrophe is part of contemporary island imaginaries. In contrast to contemporary apocalyptic scenarios of U.S. writing, the documentary films, plays, poetry, and novels examined in this course focus on modes of cultural continuity and personal survival of disaster--which includes exile and cultural loss. We will consider these texts in their regional linguistic and cultural archipelagic "contact zones," comparing Anglophone, Hispanophone, and Francophone writing in order to ask what research questions are possible when we use reach across archipelagos using comparative francophone studies, and what is illuminated by concentrating on regional contexts? Or, considering the environmental tests of military tests at Ruahini, Tahiti and Vieques, Puerto Rico, what other archipelagic connections can we identify? Conducted in French.