Neighbor News
Mary L. Cornille Lecture with Fran?oise Lionnet: "Literary Routes: Migration and the Creative Economy"
Françoise Lionnet, Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor In the Humanities at Wellesley College, gives a lecture on Feb 25th.
Thursday, February 25th, 7:00 PM Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College.
“In summer 2015, the media spotlight was trained daily on the accelerating crisis in the Mediterranean. Yet news reports and statistics have only routinized and depersonalized these disasters. As a humanist, I am more interested in the small narratives and significant details that give us the texture and fabric of human interactions in the contact zones of migratory flows. My presentation engages with the poetic and theatrical work of Soeuf Elbadawi, who reminds us that this crisis is a global phenomenon that reaches deep into the southwestern Indian Ocean and the Comoros archipelago, off the coast of East Africa, where Mayotte is the 5th overseas department of France. I will reflect on the way our analytical disciplines can contribute to a rethinking of the means of representation and dissemination of creative perspectives from the so-called “ultraperipheries” of Europe. What can literary critics do to enhance awareness of human rights issues and further epistemological equality? What is the critical effectiveness of literature in the world as agent of cultural change and how do we heighten appreciation for stories and storytelling, for the insatiable human desire to make sense of a chaotic world through narrative?”
Françoise Lionnet is the Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor In the Humanities, Wellesley College, Prof. of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, UCLA Distinguished Professor, French and Francophone, Comparative Literature, and Gender Studies.
