The front covers of books written by Algerian women serve as the primary source of investigation in Front Cover Iconography and Algerian Women Writers. These covers have implications that extend beyond selling the book. What we see on one side of the page--or in this case, the cover, (recto) controls what we read on the reverse--in this case, the text itself (verso). Using theories of the paratext, including those of Gerard Genette and Jonathan Gray, this book determines how four dominant iconographies used on the covers of Algerian women's writing - Orientalist art, the veil, the desert, and...

Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Le Imagining the Ideal Reader uncovers the primary textual relationship that Linda Le (1963- ), the most prolific Francophone author of the Vietnamese diaspora, fosters with a literary precursor of Austrian descent: the feminist writer-in-exile, Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). This study offers an overdue exploration of the notably European roots of Le's writerly formation. It traces an unexamined feminist import in her work to a sixteen-year inter- and intra-textual engagement with Bachmann and positions the latter as an imagined ideal reader of Le's...

Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory demonstrates how the invisibility of women (historically, politically, cross-culturally, etc.) has led to the omission of Gabon s literature from the African canon, but it also discusses in depth the unique elements of Gabonese women s writing that show it is worthy of critical recognition and that prove why Gabonese women writers must be considered a major force in African literature. This book is the only book-length critical study of Gabonese literature that exists in English and although there are titles in French that provide analyses of...

Drawing links between the Francophone literatures of Canada, the French Caribbean, and North Africa, Spaces of Creation demonstrates that problematic issues of dynamic, postcolonial societies can and do fuel creative acts on the part of women. The trying experiences of displaced mothers and their daughters, including isolation, domestic violence, and single parenthood, often serve to inspire introspection and creative action. In effect, their painful, frustrating existence provides the opportunity--the space of creation--necessary to weave and transmit stories. Organized around different...

This study interrogates how the French empire was imagined in three literary representations of French colonialism: the conquest of Tahiti, and the established colonial systems in Martinique and in India. The study is the first in either English or French to demonstrate that representations of power relations, as well as the broader discourses with which they were linked, were as closely concerned with probing the similarities and differences of rival European colonial systems as they were with reinforcing their imagined superiority over the colonized, and that such power relations should not...

The decolonization of Algeria represents a turning point in world history, marking the end of France's colonial empire, the birth of the Algerian republic, and the appearance of the Third World and pan-Arabism. Algeria emerged from colonial domination to negotiate the release of American hostages in Iran during the Carter administration. Radical Islam would later rise from the ashes of Algeria's failed democracy, leading to a civil war and the training of Algerian terrorists in Afghanistan. Moreover, the decolonization of Algeria offered an imperfect model of decolonization to other nations...

This volume brings together scholars working in different languages-Creole, French, English, Spanish-and modes of cultural production-literature, art, film, music-to suggest how best to model courses that impart the rich, vibrant, and multivalent aspects of the Caribbean in the classroom.

This book examines representations of the body in the works of four Oceanian women authors of French expression, considering postcolonial and feminist theoretical concepts in relation to Oceanian literary production.

Through literary and historical readings, this book explores how France was haunted by the violence of its colonial efforts in Algeria. Employing literary, philosophical, and archival analyses, it provides a new perspective on literary works from the French colonial period, while addressing questions of history, trauma, memory, and culture.