COML 4367

Aime Cesaire: Poetics of Politics of Decolonization

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

A detailed exploration of the poetic, dramatic and political writings of the great Martinican poet and statesman in their multifarious contexts, influences and dialogues, including: "Black Paris" of the 1920s and 1930s, Négritude, surrealism, French and American avant-garde poetry (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Lautréamont, Hughes, Mackay, et al.), philosophy (especially Nietzsche, Frobenius, Hegel, Marx and Sartre), communism, struggles for decolonization in the post WW II era.  We will attend specifically to how the history of racial oppression can be met in language and to the conflicts and intersections between public and private speech or between the decolonization of peoples and minds.   Reading ability in French helpful, but not required.  All primary texts available in English translation. 

When Offered Fall.

Permission Note Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

Breadth Requirement (GB)
Distribution Category (LA-AS)

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