In the second workshop of this series on The Future of French and Francophone Studies, participants will explore with audience participants some of the constitutive questions of the field of Francophone Studies, in relation both to teaching and to research.

In the first workshop session, panelists will initiate a discussion about the contemporary forms and stakes of linguistic diversity in the "francophone world" and how they analyze and teach texts that are at the confluence of several languages.

The second session will be devoted to the question of how we historicize the francophone. While the field has tended to privilege 20th-Century texts and debates, some researchers have begun to make claims on other time periods and develop a longue durée approach to the francophone. This panel will consider how the central questions and methodologies in the field are being transformed by such a chronological expansion.

The third panel will explore the process of "politicization" of the francophone. While the dominance of "politics" over "aesthetics" has long been used to describe the field, current works are interrogating the nature of the "political" in francophone studies, often in conjunction with the affirmation of human rights, the deployment of violence and the multiple experiences of trauma.

This workshop is open to scholars and graduate students in French and Francophone studies and related fields with an interest in the topics to be explored. The format of the workshop is designed to encourage a dialogue among panelists and the scholars and students in the audience. It will start with an online forum that will go live about ten days before the meeting on April 3. Rather than a formal paper, the discussants in each session are being asked to prepare a set of short responses (500 words each) to a series of queries. Their responses will be posted, and conference attendees are encouraged to read and comment on their responses, as a way of stimulating ideas and perspectives to be explored together at the workshop.

RSVP to [email protected] by April 1.

For more information: e-mail Lindsey Long at [email protected] or call the Maison Française at 212 854-4482.