The Society of Fellows hosts the Thursday Lecture Series (TLS), which runs regularly throughout the academic year. The Fall Semester TLS, our Fellows present their own work, chaired by Columbia faculty.

On Postemancipation Coloniality: Narratives and Poetics from the Francosphere

Lecture by A. Véronique Charles
Chaired by Thomas W. Dodman

During the first hundred years following legal emancipation across the French empire in 1848, in what ways did autobiographical narratives, prose fiction, and poetry address the continuation of black unfreedom? In this talk, A. Véronique Charles examines literary constructs of unfreedom within early twentieth-century Black literary production alongside bound fugitive slave narratives that circulated between Senegal and the metropole in the 1880s. This literary periodization specifically predates the institutional study of the respective fields of Caribbean and African literature. Charles notably charts a literary problem space through which readers can parse slavery’s past in canonical and lesser-known writings by Senegalese, Reunionese, and Antillean intellectuals, or évolués, whose citizenship dates back to nineteenth-century abolition.

Fall Thursday Lecture Series events are open to Columbia-affiliated faculty, students, and invited guests. All others interested in attending, please email the SOF/Heyman at [email protected].

Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.