French Cultural Studies

Criticism at the Crossroads

Edited by Marie-Pierre Le Hir & Dana Strand

Subjects: Cultural Studies
Paperback : 9780791445860, 336 pages, June 2000
Hardcover : 9780791445853, 336 pages, June 2000

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Part I. Rethinking the Discipline: From French Studies to French Cultural Studies

1. Identity Crises: France, Culture, and the Idea of the Nation
Lawrence D. Kritzman

2. Nana and the Nation: French Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Work
Jean E. Pedersen

3. On the Language-Culture Nexus
Ross Chambers

4. Creolized North Africa: What Do They Really Speak in the Maghreb?
Alawa Toumi

5. Rap Music and French Cultural Studies: For an Ethics of the Ephemeral
Mireille Rosello

6. In Search of a Postmodern Ethics of Knowledge: The Cultural Critic's Dilemma
Michèle Druon

7. The "Popular" in Cultural Studies
Marie-Pierre Le Hir

Part II. Negotiating Postcolonial Identities: Beyond Disciplinary and Geographic Boundaries

8. Reframing Baudelaire: Literary History, Biography, Postcolonial Theory, and Vernacular Languages
Françoise Lionnet

9. Performance, Departmentalization, and Detour in the Writing of Patrick Chamoiseau
Cilas Kemedjio

10. Addicted to Race: Performativity, Agency, and Césaire's A Tempest
Timothy Scheie

11. "Dark Continents" Collide: Race and Gender in Claire Denis's Chocolat
Dana Strand

12. Cette Enfant Blanche de L'Asie: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Métissage in Marguerite Duras's L'Amant
Jeanne Garane

13. African Intellectuals in France: Echoes of Senghor in Ngandu's Memoirs
Janice Spleth

14. Interdisciplinary, Knowledge, and Desire: A Reading of Marcel Griaule's Dieu d'eau
Leslie Rabine

15. Political Geography of Literature: On Khatibi's "Professional Traveller"
Réda Bensmaïa

Contributors
Index

Addresses the theoretical and pedagogical implications of redefining French Studies as an interdisciplinary field, while providing practical examples of the kind of criticism that such a shift would entail.

Description

French Cultural Studies provides a theoretical framework for reconsidering the domain of knowledge and expertise traditionally associated with the discipline of French. The contributors accompany their analysis of a wide variety of topics in French and Francophone Studies with a spirit of critical self-awareness that continually challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries. Ranging from a reevaluation of Baudelaire's poetic interlude in the Mascarene Islands to a discussion of Patrick Chamoiseau's fictional blueprint for Caribbean resistance, these essays address the theoretical and pedagogical implications of redefining French Studies as an interdisciplinary field, while providing practical examples of the kind of criticism that such a shift would entail.

Contributors include Réda Bensmaia, Ross Chambers, Michele Druon, Jeanne Garane, Cilas Kemedjio, Larry Kritzman, Marie-Pierre Le Hir, Francoise Lionnet, Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, Leslie Rabine, Mireille Rosello, Timothy Scheie, Janice Spleth, Dana Strand, and Alawa Toumi.

Marie-Pierre Le Hir is Treuhaft Associate Professor of French at Case Western Reserve University. Dana Strand is Professor of French at Carleton College, Minnesota, and is the author of Colette: A Study of the Short Fiction.

Reviews

"A collection of this type on French Cultural Studies is a very welcome and necessary publication, at a time when the field is well established, particularly in North American universities. " — Michel Laronde, The University of Iowa