Courses

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This course explores configurations of the feminine as force of disorder in the largely masculinist literary universe of the twentieth-century French-speaking Caribbean. How do certain kinds of female characters reflect the disconcerting realities that plague the communities in which they are embedded? What alternative modes of being might women’s non- or even anti-communal practices of freedom suggest? How do such freedom practices disrupt North Atlantic theorizations of the individual in/and community? How capable are we, as Global South scholars, of maintaining commitments to read generously in the face of anti-sociality or moral ambiguity? What ordering codes do we inadvertantly perpetuate through our own reading practices?

Over the course of the semester, we will look closely at the “troubling” heroines presented in prose fiction writing by authors of both genders in order to identify the thematic points of intersection and common formal strategies that emerge in their work. We will consider the symbolic value of the “witch,” the “zombie,” the “goddess,” the “old maid,” and other disturbing or disturbed women as so many reflections on – and of – social phenomena that mark the region and its history.