Destination: Martinique & Guadeloupe!
Guillaume Lacroix, Consul General of France in Chicago, will give a welcome as we discover the history, geography, and languages of these two French departments in the Caribbean with Prof. Hanétha Vété-Congolo, Audrey Lordinot and Prof. Odile Ferly.
This event will be in English and will take place over Zoom. A link will be sent to participants prior to the event.
Friday, Mar 5 from 6 to 7:30 pm
Free, $10 suggested donation
Make a donation when you register for this event and you'll be automatically entered to win a bottle of Rhum Clément VSOP and two Rhum Clément glasses!
Must be 21 or older to win. Winner must present ID upon collecting prize.
Hanétha Vété-Congolo is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College, Maine, Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. She is affiliated to the Africa Academic Hub, the Africana, the Latin American, Caribbean and LatinX and the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Programs of her institution. She is also Professeure Associée at the Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, France (CRESEM/GRENAL, Langages et identités). Her scholarship focuses principally on Caribbean and African critical thought, philosophy, literature, culture and orality. Very interdisciplinary and comparative, her works pays particular attention to discourses by women and about women of the Caribbean and, West and Central Africa. She is author of Nous sommes Martiniquaises. Pawòl en bouches de femmes châtaignes : Une pensée existentialiste noire sur la question des femmes [L’Harmattan, Genres, Écoles et Société, 2020], L’interoralité caribéenne: le mot conté de l’identité (Vers un traité d’esthétique caribéenne) [Connaissance et Savoirs, 2016, 2nd ed.], and editor of Le conte d’hier, aujourd’hui : Oralité et modernité [Academia-L’Harmattan, 2014], Léon-Gontran Damas : Une Négritude entière (L’Harmattan, Espaces Littéraires, 2015) and, The Caribbean Oral Tradition [Palgrave MacMillan, 2016].
Her poetry collections, Avoir et Être : Ce que j’Ai, ce que je Suis and Mon parler de Guinée were respectively published with Le chasseur Abstrait in 2009 and L’Harmattan [coll. Poètes des cinq continents] in 2015. Her unpublished collection of poetry Womb of a Woman was Shortlisted for the 2015 Small Axe Literary Competition.
Audrey Lordinot was born and raised in Martinique. She has a Master’s Degree in English Studies from Université Paris 3 - La Sorbonne Nouvelle. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management and in Cultural Management. She was the director of La Maison du Bèlè in Martinique from 2003 to 2008. This cultural center dedicated to traditional bèlè dance and music has become a reference on the island, and in the field of world music. She produced two albums with Les Maîtres du Bèlè, ancient singers and tanbou bèlè (drummers), aged 70 years old and over.
She accompanied several artists (theater, music, dance) in their development in Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guyana and Paris from 2009 to 2016. Besides, she coordinated the activities of HF Ile-de-France, an association fighting against gender inequalities in the arts and culture, from 2014 to 2015.
She created a website dedicated to cultural and artistic activities in Martinique in 2017. Through that media, she aims at offering a better view of the local cultural calendar; providing artists and cultural event organizers with a specialized media; and allowing visitors to get a feel for the cultural life on the island.
Audrey Lordinot has lived in New York since 2019, but she maintains a close link with Martinique, as L’Officiel Martinique continues to exist. She has been teaching French as a second language at the French Institute Alliance Française - FIAF since January 2021.
When time permits, Audrey Lordinot enjoys playing the guitar and singing Caribbean, classical and French pop, by the beach after a swim…
Dr. Odile Ferly received a B.A. from the University of Bristol, UK, an M.A. from the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, and a Ph.D. from the University of Bristol. She has been at Clark University since 2004 and is affiliated with the programs in Communication and Culture, Race and Ethnic Relations, and Women's and Gender Studies.
Current Research and Teaching Dr. Ferly's research interests are Caribbean literatures and cultures from a comparative perspective, including the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanic regions. Her book A Poetics of Relation: Caribbean Women Writing at the Millennium (2012) examines contemporary women's writing from the Caribbean and its diaspora, focusing on the issues of race and gender in connection with history, language, and the Caribbean literary tradition. Her current research focus is on cultural politics in the French Caribbean. She teaches interdisciplinary courses on literatures and cultures from Francophone countries, on French popular culture, immigration in France and on Caribbean writing from a comparative perspective.
Her works include:
"A Poetics of Relation: Caribbean Women Writing at the Millennium", New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
"Defying Binarism: Cross-dressing and Transdressing in Mayra Santos Febres's Sirena Selena vestida de pena and Rita Indiana Hernández's La estrategia de Chochueca," in The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities, ed. M. C Fumagalli, B. Ledent, and R. del Valle Alcalá, University of Virginia Press, 2013, 239-252.
"The Mirror That We Don't Want: Literary Confrontations Between Haitians and Guadeloupeans", in Haiti and the Diaspora in the Wider Caribbean, ed. Ph. Zacair, University Press of Florida, 2010, 58-81.
"La pluralit é comme gage de coh érence : m étissage et antillanit é dans L'autre qui danse", in M étissages et marronnages dans l'oeuvre de Suzanne Dracius, ed. Y. Helm, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009, 225-239.
"A Limited Caribbeanness? The Continental Caribbean as Visions of Hell in Alejo Carpentier's 'El siglo de las luces' and Maryse Cond é's 'La vie sc él érate'", Caribbean Quaterly, vol. 55, No. 1, March 2009, 43-59.
"La historici(u)dad en 'Invi's Paradise', de Aurora Arias", MaComère (The Journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars), No. 7 (2006), ed. H. Simpson, 66-76.
"Women and History-Making in Literature from the Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean", in Swinging Her Breasts at History: Language, Body and the Caribbean Woman's Text, ed. M. Inghilleri, London: Mango Publishing, 2006, 30-46.
"Writing Cultural and Gender Difference: Sylviane Telchid's 'Throvia de la Dominique'", in New Readings Vol. 7, electronic journal ed. by K. Jones and J. Sayner, University of Cardiff, UK, 2004, ISSN No. 1359-7485.
"Neither Here Nor There: The Homeland in Diaspora Women Writers from the Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean", in Caribbean Women Writers and Interculturality, ed. by Giovanna Covi, University of Trento, Italy, 2003, 31-54.
"The Fanonian Theory of Violence in Women's Fiction from the Caribbean", in Convergences and Interferences: Newness in Intercultural Practices, ed. K. Gyssels and I. Hoving, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001, 107-119.