School of Social and Political Science

Description

The Centre of African Studies is pleased to invite you to the following seminar as part of its seminar series.

Speaker: Professor Mame-Fatou Niang, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg

Discussant: Dr Fraser McQueen, Lecturer in French Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Bristol

Chair: Dr Katucha Bento, Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies, Co-Director of RACE.ED, University of Edinburgh

Organised by the Centre of African Studies and co-badged by RACE.ED, University of Edinburgh

Race and racism do not exist in contemporary France where they supposedly lie lifeless, slain by the Republican sword that felled them in 1789. This talk will analyze France's refusal to consider race as a valid category of analysis, when it functions precisely as an instantaneous element of natural belonging to the national group for whites (irrespective of their citizenship status), and an indelible mark of foreignness, probationary acceptance, or impossible inclusion in the case of non-whites. More specifically, this talk weights on what the refusal to “see” race has meant for France’s engagement with African countries and African citizens.Ultimately, by confronting the silences around race, racism and colonial memory, this lecture will propose keys to mend the Republic's broken promise of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité .

When: Wednesday 11th October 2023

Where: Hugh Robson Building, Lecture  Theatre G.04

To attend this event: Please register on Eventbrite

Speaker Biography:

Professor Mame-Fatou Niang is the Director and Founder, CBESA - Center for Black European Studies at the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University.

Mame-Fatou Niang is the Director of the Center for Black European Studies at the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies in CMU's Department of Modern Languages, the author of Identités Françaises (Brill, 2019) and the co-author of Universalisme (Anamosa, 2022). She conducts research on economies of the living/living economy, Blackness in Contemporary France, and French Universalism.

Niang is an Artist-in-Residence at the Ateliers Médicis in Paris, working on a project entitled “Échoïques” (Sounds of Silence).

In 2015, Niang co-directed “Mariannes Noires: Mosaïques Afropéennes” with Kaytie Nielsen, a sophomore in her French class. The film follows seven Afro-French women as they investigate the pieces of their mosaic identities, and unravel what it means to be Black and French, Black in France. In 2021, she served as the Melodia Jones Distinguished Chair of French Studies at University at Buffalo.

Niang has collaborated with Slate, Jacobin, and several news outlets in France. She is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled Mosaica Nigra: Blackness in 21st-century France.

Discussant Biography:

Dr Fraser McQueen is a lecturer in French Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol, having previously held positions as a lecturer and postdoctoral research fellow at the Universities of Stirling and Edinburgh respectively. He completed his PhD, entitled 'Race, Religion, and Communities of Friendship: Contemporary French Islamophobia in Literature and Film' in November 2021, with cross-institutional supervision from the Universities of Stirling and Aberdeen. His thesis, which explores Islamophobia and community in contemporary France through a corpus of twelve literary and filmic texts, is currently under contract as a monograph with Liverpool University Press. His current research interests retain the interdisciplinary focus of his earlier work, drawing on scholarship from literary theory, history, film studies, sociology, anthropology, and political science. He has interests in the cultural production of the French far right; the mainstreaming of far-right conspiracy theories; the work of Michel Houellebecq (on which he has published two articles in peer-reviewed journals); representations of jihadi women in media and cultural production; the role of utopianism in both propagating and opposing racism; and the national variations (or lack thereof) in the so-called 'culture wars' that have underpinned politics in recent years. A common thread in all of these apparently diverse interests is an interest in postcolonial and decolonial studies, and in the difficulties both have had in being recognised as legitimate fields of research in France (whether in the academy or public discourse). This interest has led Fraser to be an active member in, and, since 2019, communications officer of, the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies.