Diversity and decolonization
Three panel discussions will be held online later this month for the series Diversity and Decolonization in the Foreign Languages & Literatures Curriculum.
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros (Penn) and Fernando Valerio-Holguín (Colorado State) will be panelists for “African-American Contemporary Writers with Hispanic Caribbean Roots” via Zoom on April 21 at 1:15 p.m. Lafayette Prof. Amauri Gutiérrez-Coto will moderate.
Étienne Achille (Villanova), Claudine Jean-Baptiste (CUNY), and Shanna Jean-Baptiste (Rutgers) will be panelists for “Decolonial Approaches to French History and Memory” on April 22 at 3 p.m. Lafayette Profs. Annie de Saussure and Wendy Wilson-Fall will moderate. Register.
Amauri will join Matthew Pettway (University of South Alabama) and Nick Jones (Bucknell) as panelists plus moderate “African Diaspora in the Hispanic Caribbean” via Zoom on April 28 at 1:15 p.m.
The series brings together Francophone and Hispanic scholars and authors to discuss the histories and literatures of the African diaspora in the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The two panels in Spanish explore the teaching of Africana Diaspora from author and scholar perspectives. These panels about the Spanish-speaking Caribbean Africana Diaspora are part of the course Spanish 347, Afro-descendant Writers in the Spanish Caribbean, taught this spring by Amauri.
The Francophone panel explores the relationship between colonial history and postcolonial memory in Francophone Caribbean literature. Francophone scholars will discuss how cultures and literatures of the African diaspora are still too often forgotten and written out of French national memory and the literary canon. The panel engages directly with the topic of Annie’s seminar, French 441, Myths, Monuments, and National Memory, taught this spring.
Series sponsors are the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Africana Studies Program, Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program, Center for Humanities, and Office for Intercultural Development.