Afropean lit and gender: Bernardine Evaristo

Objectif

By adopting an author-focused approach, this class aims to understand how Bernardine Evaristo's writing contributes to the representation of gender in today's multicultural Britain.

The class is going to focus on her 2019 novel - Girl, Woman, Other - as well as on her personal 2023 Manifesto On Never Giving Up.

Evaristo's novel is an invitation to deconstruct the categories by which gender and race are usually known to restrict individual lives while proposing new and open-ended ways of articulating them. By narrating the life journey of 12 "girls, women, others", the novel reflects on the diversity of Britain for at least the last century and on how blindness and prejudice about this actual diversity have impacted the lives of the protagonists. Beyond the simpicity and explicitness of the table of contents, the chapters and characters appear increasingly intertwined as you progress in your reading, effectively producing a new image of what Britain is and has been.

With her Manifesto on Never Giving Up, Evaristo provides us with a biographical narrative, like a view on the author "behind the scene" of the novel. She offers here some insights into what lies behind the writing of her wonderful novel: a life made hard and complex by racist, gender, and social prejudice as she experienced them and how she found her own way to express them in order not to be contained by them.

The semester shall begin with general introduction sessions, which shall be followed by discussions monitored by the students.

The class is going to be assessed through a personal essay submitted by week 10 and students are expected to engage in a discussion in front of the class when indivudual essays are returned by the teacher.

Contenu

• Weeks 1 to 3: General presentation by the teacher of the author, texts and context, and elements of bibliography
• Week 4-6: Focus on student's work based on their reading and bibliographical research
• Week 7: Submission of essay topic and topical paragraph by students
• Weekk 8 and 9: Students articulate an essay
• Week 10: Students submit their essays and are ready to engage in a discussion about their topic
• Week 11: Exam topics are introduced; first batch of returned essays discussed in class (cf. list established in week 5)
• Week 12: Exam topic discussion; second batch of essays returned and discussed in class
• Week 13: Exam students submit their personal reading lists; third batch of essays returned and discussed in class
• Week 14: fourth batch of essays returned and discussed in class.