Francophone Crossings brings together the unique and creative voices of Fabienne Kanor (Martinique) and Charline Effah (Gabon) for a two-part program. The program will be moderated by Anny-Dominique Curtius (University of Iowa), Gladys Francis (Georgia State University) and Cheryl Toman (University of Alabama).

Corps à Coeur is the second part of the program and features Fabienne Kanor. Kanor will begin this hour-long program by sharing her highly innovative and moving performance piece, Corps de l’histoire, followed by a talk on her haunting literary work, Humus, in which women’s voices are prominent in the construction of a collective memory of slavery.

Please note that the first part of this program, entitled Transcendances and featuring Charline Effah, will take place October 27 at 12:00 p.m. Learn more.

November 3 at 12:00 p.m.

This online event is free and open to the public.

Panelists:

• Fabienne Kanor is a French award-winning novelist, filmmaker and journalist. She was born in Orléans, France, where she witnessed her Martinican parents’ resolute desire to integrate and blend into the Métropole française that relentlessly regarded them as foreigners. At an early age, Kanor thus began to question her sense of belonging at the crossroads of France, the Caribbean and Africa. These identity negotiations would nurture her filmic, literary, performance and journalistic engagements. It is through these polycentric avenues that Kanor critically observes and questions colonial history and memory and how they affect relationships to the body, race, gender, place and borders. Since the publication of her first novel, D’eaux douces in 2004, Fabienne Kanor has made her mark as a notable francophone writer, filmmaker, activist and scholar. She is the author of fourteen documentary films, nine novels, eight audio documentaries, two movies, two plays, four short stories and numerous critical essays and live performances. Her novel Humus (2006) was awarded the Réseau France Outre-mer Prize. She was awarded the ETC Caraïbe prize for her play Homo Humus Est in 2006. In 2010, Kanor was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Her novel Faire l’aventure (2014) received the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe du Tout-Monde for the best literary work in French from the Caribbean and the Americas. In 2020, her latest novel Louisiane and the English translation of Humus were published. Humus (2020) was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Prose.
• Anny-Dominique Curtius is Associate Professor of Francophone Studies at the University of Iowa where she also serves as Co-Director of the working group “Museum Futures” at the Obermann Center for Advanced studies and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of French and Italian. Her research is interdisciplinary as it circulates at the crossroads of several areas of study including cultural theory, cinematic, visual and performing arts of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. She is notably the author of Suzanne Césaire. Archéologie littéraire et artistique d’une mémoire empêchée (2020) and Symbioses d’une mémoire: Manifestations religieuses et littératures de la Caraïbe (2006).
• Dr. Gladys M. Francis is Associate Professor of Francophone studies, theory and cultural studies at Georgia State University. She explores issues of identify formation, race, gender-based violence, trauma, social cohesion, and intercultural immersion through the arts. Her transdisciplinary research involves Africana studies; postcolonial studies; visual and media studies; women, gender and sexuality studies. She currently serves as the Head of the French and Francophone Studies Program and the Director of Graduate Studies in her department. She counts over forty articles on her research interests. Her books include Odious Caribbean Women and the Palpable Aesthetics of Transgression (2017) and Amour, sexe, genre et trauma dans la Caraïbe francophone (2016).
• Cheryl Toman is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Classics at The University of Alabama. Toman’s interdisciplinary research focuses on Francophone women writers from Subsaharan Africa and specifically those from Cameroon, Gabon and Mali. She is the author of two books, Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory (2016) and Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature (2008). She is the translator of Justine Mintsa’s Awu’s Story (2018) and Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury’s Essential Encounters (2002). In 2020, she was named Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

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This event is organized by the University of Alabama, Georgia State University, the University of Iowa, and with the support of the Atlanta Office of the Cultural Services of the Embassy of France in the United States, FLAGS (Foreign Language Association of Graduate Students), The French Club @ Georgia State University and Engaging the Francophone World.