Vottero Defends Dissertation
Constance Vottero, a student in our program in French Language & Literature, has successfully defended her dissertation, titled “Theorizing the Black Diaspora Across the Atlantic.” From her abstract:
This dissertation reconsiders the creative and strategic crisscrossings among the African diaspora’s literary and cultural productions, paying special attention to the status and influence of Black America(ns), as a point of reference, on African and Afro-descendant writers working in French. Building upon the works of Paul Gilroy on the one hand, and Frida Ekotto on the other, I trace a major literary lineage in Afro-diasporic literature that revolves around the question of legibility. The texts studied in this dissertation are linked by their focus on a hermeneutic that is deployed along two main lines of thought. At the diegetic level, how are the characters being (mis)read by other members of the African diaspora, and reciprocally, how do the characters see the others and situate themselves in relation to them? At the meta-level, how does this reading system, or system of knowledge acquisition, invite or reproduce a critique of genre (and gender) conventions and classifications?
Congratulations, Constance!