Valérie K. Orlando

The award of an NEH Summer Stipend provides the time and resources to make significant progress on my forthcoming book project, tentatively titled ”Algiers as ‘Realm of Memory’ in Contemporary Algerian Literature of French Expression, which engages with postcolonial and decolonial theory (Mignolo, Walsh, Achille, Vergès, Apter) in order to respond to a question proposed by Algerian scholar Réda Bensmaia in his book Experimental Nations, or the Invention of the Maghreb: “Under what historical conditions is a city, and a postcolonial city at that, transformed into a ‘site of memory’?” 

“When the Tout-Monde is not one: Maryse Condé’s Problematic ‘World-in-Motion’ in Les belles ténébreuses (2008) and Le fabuleux et triste destin d’Ivan et Ivana (2017)”, in Chronotropics: Caribbean Women Writing Spacetime. Eds. Odile Ferly and Zimmerman (2023): 139-156.

Peer reviewed article: “Women Filmmakers, War, Violence and Healing on the Algerian Screen: Mounia Meddour’s Papicha (2019)”. Expressions maghrébines. Vol title : « Théories voyageuses » féministes en territoires littéraires et artistiques maghrébins

"Moroccan Film: Documenting Women’s Resistance of the ‘Everyday’ in Nabil Ayouch’s Much Loved (2015)" is one of the three Keynote lectures Valerie Orlando gave in Morocco in December 2023.

The two other Keynote lectures in December in Morocco were titled "Filming and Documenting Changing Climates in Morocco: The Socio-politically Committed Documentary" MA Lecture Series, Intercultural Communication Studies Program, Department of English, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah de Fès, Fès, Morocco (December 12, 2023). 

The third Keynote lecture is “Post Covid? Of pens and paper and “taking the time you need”: the joy of exploring francophone literature through slowness and thoughtfulness (without technology)”. This was a conference on The Post-Pandemic and the digital turn in Higher Education: the fate of the humanities, hosted by the “Identity and Difference Research Group” in collaboration with “Strategies of Cultural Industries, Communication and Social Research Lab”.

“‘Ici ou ailleurs c’est pareil’ dans un ‘monde-en-mouvement’: La littérature-monde de Wajdi Mouawad: Transculturelle, transnationale et sans frontières”, La Revue des Lettres Romanes, Dossier thématique « Interroger le pouvoir herméneutique des littératures francophones » Eds. Boutaghou- Bessière-Dehoux (Vol. 75, n° 1-2, 2021 :101-119)

This article analyzes Wajdi Mouawad’s plays through the concept of La littérature-monde. His many works encourage thinking about possible explorations in stories written in French outside the Metropolis. Written from several diasporic perspectives - Lebanon, Canada, France - Mouawad portrays the characters in his plays, Littoral, Incendies, Forêts and Ciels as those of a multicultural, cosmopolitan world, comprised of many pasts and elsewheres. His works inspire reflecting on the positionality of words such as “French” and “French-speaking”. In Mouawad’s works, these labels are displaced by a literary universe that is not rooted in a single colonial or postcolonial past, but rather conceived in terms of “relations” (to use the concept of Édouard Glissant) with other identities and reference points of our contemporary world. Mouawad forces us to compare and contrast regions and nations, borders and peripheries, heres and elsewheres, and how these are linked through the thousands of stories of displacement currently unfolding on our planet.

This volume is the first to focus on teaching about Haiti’s complex history and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective. Making broad connections between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, contributors provide pedagogical guidance on how to approach the country from different lenses in course curricula. They offer practical suggestions, theories on a wide variety of texts, examples of syllabi, and classroom experiences. Teaching Haiti dispels stereotypes associating Haiti with disaster, poverty, and negative ideas of Vodou, going beyond the simplistic neocolonial, imperialist, and racist descriptions often found in literary and historical accounts. Instructors in diverse subject areas discuss ways of reshaping old narratives through women’s and gender studies, poetry, theater, art, religion, language, politics, history, and popular culture, and they advocate for including Haiti in American and Latin American studies courses.