Originally founded by Tarana Burke in 2006, the “Me Too Movement” seeks to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly women of color, “to help find pathways to healing” (“metoomvmt.org/about/). Then, in the fall of 2017, the #MeToo hashtag reverberated throughout the Internet, on the front pages of newspapers, and in the public square as…[Read more]

In the Haitian religious tradition of Vodou, Gede is the lwa, or spirit, concerned with the
beginning of life and the passage into the afterlife, death and regeneration. Gede is often
regarded as the spirit of the people in Haiti because he has a direct connection to every living
being, everyone may call on Gede for protection. Gede’s appeal a…[Read more]

In the last two decades since the publication of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Caribbean historical studies has undergone an ‘archival turn.’ Indeed, archives and formal institutions of knowledge have always been and continue to be an integral part of historical work, but Trouillot’s work has cal…[Read more]

« La mémoire est un droit » écrit Christiane Taubira dans sa contribution au débat ‘La Mémoire de l’esclavage et ses dérives’ en 2006 pour la revue philosophique Cités. Étant donné que la mémoire est un droit, qu’est-ce que l’on entend par mémoire ? La mémoire de qui et de quoi ? Pourquoi faut-il s’en souvenir ? Quel est le but de la mémoire ? P…[Read more]

W. G. Sebald and Patrick Modiano are two contemporary authors who share similar themes and literary practices. They are both fastidiously or even obsessively historical in their narrative development. And they seem preoccupied with the sins of World War II. Critics have divided feelings about their accomplishments. Skeptics say their trauma…[Read more]

The Egyptian Surrealist Art et Liberté group was recuperated in two exhibitions beginning in 2016 and continuing through 2018. The larger exhibition by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath emphasizes the group’s internationalism and the complexity of its engagement with various forms of Surrealism, including André Breton and Leon Trotsky’s 1938 manif…[Read more]

Drawing on Arabic textual traditions and foregrounding the liminal time and space of administrative detention, of the expired visa, of deportation, and of repatriation, Muslim slave narratives deserve recognition as generative forebears of transnational, multicultural literature in both England and the United States. Yet these forebears were…[Read more]

This paper examines cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief (2007) and Open City (2011). The protagonists of both novels maintain cosmopolitan identities largely by embracing an international literary culture in which elite cosmopolitan fiction relays the experiences of marginalized cosmopolitan subjects, such as the migrant w…[Read more]

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

Colonialism waned in the 1940s through 60s amidst decolonization movements, yet globalization flourished in often unnoticed, hegemonic pathways. Considering cultural products of this moment leads us to ask what happens in the age of globalization that follows after an age of nationalism. When capital migrates, and labour follows, whence culture?…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]