Through a close reading of seven literary memoirs of the Nazi Occupation of France, Refiguring Les Années Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation shows how the memory of the period has been shaped by political and social factors. An interdisciplinary study incorporating trauma theory, history, and folklore studies, this book examines representations of the Occupation by a diverse group of writers ranging from a female Resistance fighter to one of the first French Roma novelists. The methodological diversity of the volume brings to the fore each author’s unique perspective and demonstrates that their works are at once historically and artistically significant. Above all, this book gives voice to groups whose experiences in occupied France have largely been forgotten.

This book presents the first comparative study of the works of Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion in relation to their vigorous struggles against Nazi aggression during World War II and the Holocaust. It illuminates ways in which their early lives conditioned both their political engagements during wartime and their extraordinary literary creations empowered by what Lara R. Curtis refers to as modes of ‘writing resistance.’ With skillful recourse to a remarkable variety of genres, they offer compelling autobiographical reflections, vivid chronicles of wartime atrocities, eyewitness accounts of victims, and acute perspectives on the political implications of major events. Their sensitive reflections of gendered subjectivity authenticate the myriad voices and visions they capture. In sum, this book highlights the lives and works of three courageous women who were ceaselessly committed to a noble cause during the Holocaust and World War II.

The Poetics of Contemporary Narratives in the Arabic Diaspora presents a captivating exploration of the rich tapestry of Middle Eastern diasporic literature, spanning the landscapes of Canada and France. With eloquent prose, the author guides readers on an enthralling journey through the intricate interplay of themes, styles, tropes, and sociohistorical contexts. This monograph breathes life into an array of mesmerizing texts authored by luminaries including Wajdi Mouawad, Khaled Osman, Rawi Hage, Denis Villeneuve, and Soha Béchara whose literary roots span Lebanon and Switzerland. Through meticulous analysis and thoughtful reflection, this work unveils the profound resonance of these writers' voices across borders and cultures.

Marginal Bodies and Precarious Lives in North Africa: Homo Expendibilis presents an examination of North African literature situated at the crossroads of literary analysis, political philosophy, and sociology. The author analyzes social categories in relation to civil and social protections and in particular, the ways in which disruptions to these protections can lead to social degeneration. The author’s analysis starts from the premise that precarious lives in North Africa have become true bodies of exception. In other words, they are deemed dangerous, expendable and unworthy of the rights and treatment accorded to full citizens. Thus, the author assesses portrayals of violence in contemporary literature as a crystallization of the existing disjunction between the socially disqualified and those who wield colonial, political, and religious power. Moreover, the author argues that in order to understand contemporary politics and the current climate of insecurity, a deeper understanding of precarity in North Africa from colonial times to the present is crucial. By affirming their right to exist, the author argues that the marginal bodies of North Africa offer unique insights into the society that marginalized them and thus, from the often inaudible and invisible periphery, they nevertheless challenge the dominant ideas of the center.

The year 2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of May ’68, a startling, by now almost mythic event which combined seriousness, courage, humor and theatrics. The contributions of this volume—based on papers presented the conference Does “la lutte continue”? The Global Afterlife of May ’68 at Florida State University in March 2019—explore the ramifications of that springtime protest in the contemporary world. What has widely become known as the movement of ‘68 consisted, in fact, of many synchronous movements in different nations that promoted a great variety of political, social, and cultural agendas. While it is impossible to write a global history of ’68, this volume presents a kaleidoscope of different perceptions, reflections, and receptions of protest in France, Italy, and other nations that share in common a global utopian imaginary as expressed, for example, in the slogan: “All power to the imagination!” The contributions of this collection show that, while all social struggles are political, many lasting changes in individual mentalities and social structures originated from utopian ideas that were realized first in artistic productions and their aesthetic reception. In this respect the various protests of May ’68 continue.

As one of the most prominent voices from and about the French Caribbean, Gisèle Pineau has garnered significant scholarly attention; however, this interest has culminated in precious few volumes devoted entirely to the author and her work. In response to this lack of in-depth critical attention, Reimagining Resistance in Gisèle Pineau’s Works brings together a range of perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic and across the Pacific to explore the unique ways in which Gisèle Pineau’s works redefine the concept of resistance, particularly as it relates to gender, race, history, and Antillean identity. As this volume ultimately demonstrates, resistance holds up a mirror to the political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the past, construct the present, and build the future. It argues that Pineau’s characters open the narrative frame for reading them and move us beyond the categories of the wholly defiant or the inherently complicit. Above all, as they invite us to reimagine resistance, they expose our expectations and hopefully shift our understanding about what it means to rise and to fall in a world we seek to call our own.

In this first edited collection in English on Abdellah Taïa, Denis M. Provencher and Siham Bouamer frame the distinctiveness of the Moroccan author’s migration by considering current scholarship in French and Francophone studies, post-colonial studies, affect theory, queer theory, and language and sexuality. In contrast to critics that consider Taïa to immigrate and integrate successfully to France as a writer and intellectual, Provencher and Bouamer argue that the author’s writing is replete with elements of constant migration, “comings and goings,” cruel optimism, flexible accumulation of language over borders, transnational filiations, and new forms of belonging and memory making across time and space. At the same time, his constantly evolving identity emerges in many non-places, defined as liminal and border narrative spaces where unexpected and transgressive new forms of belonging emerge without completely shedding shame, mourning, or melancholy.