This course traces the significance of France, and especially Paris for Arab and Black populations living in Paris. We will explore Postcolonial Paris chronologically to trace the historical experience, intellectual history, “civil rights movements”, and artistic production of the African diaspora. We will explore Paris as the capital of this diaspora (defined largely as both Maghrebi and Sub-Saharan Africans). We will discuss the presence of Afro-descendants as foreigners, immigrants as well as French citizens and see how they belong to, appropriate, reject, interact with this Parisian space. We will take an interdisciplinary approach and discuss topics as wide as literature, film, music, sports, arts among other disciplines.

Throughout the semester, we will study novels written in French by writers from former French colonies. Focusing specifically on Paris, West Africa, the Caribbean, we will explore the cultural, historical, and political issues raised by these texts, and observe the way they participate in postcolonial resistance or acceptance. An underlying theme of our discussion will be the definition of Paris as “home;” and Parisian “identity” we will address how these authors problematize the idea of home, both for the colonizer and the colonized, forcing them, at times, to become “other.”

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