2022-2023

Emily Jackson, Texas Christian University

This paper focuses on a critical reading of Marguerite Duras’s L’Amant (The Lover) that centers around female agency and sexuality to provide a queering, feminist rereading of the autofictional work through the lenses of queer, postcolonial, and gender studies. The crux of the paper centers on the way that the protagonist, Marguerite Donnadieu, uses her queer sexuality as a form of resilience to survive and regain agency in a society that marginalizes her. It also interrogates the interwoven identities of race, gender, and socioeconomic class in colonial French Indochina that Marguerite must navigate as a poor, white, female adolescent in a sexual relationship with a wealthy Asian man. This analysis is realized via a theoretical framework that itself becomes intersectional through its unique, cross-disciplinary application of and engagement with supplementary analyses of colonial racial and gender dynamics, homosociality, and feminist visual theory.

Rose Poku, Smith College

This essay explores a trope that compares Black women to nature as utilized by male authors during the Négritude movement. Known chiefly for its literary impact, Négritude was a Francophone movement that began in the 1930s and worked to promote Black pride throughout the African diaspora. Though Négritude authors, such as Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor, often employed this metaphor with the intention of exalting Black women, this essay argues that comparing Black women to the land is instead reductive and dehumanizing. Particularly in an African or Caribbean context where land is violated by colonizers, comparing Black women to land renders them passive and dependent on others for protection. Likening Black women to land can also position Black women as wholly responsible for the representation and guardianship of a community. Though different from viewing Black women as helpless and inanimate, this burden of representation is similarly dehumanizing since being regarded as more than human can be a form of dehumanization. This essay subsequently situates the novel Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, written by Guadeloupean author Simone Schwarz-Bart in 1972, as a literary reclamation of Black womanhood in Francophone literature. In her novel, Schwarz-Bart subverts the Négritude trope of woman as land by demonstrating that although Black women can cultivate land, they cannot be reduced to the passive, non-human land itself. Through its complex and powerful Black women characters, Schwarz-Bart’s text expands notions of Négritude by including Black women’s agency and autonomy, thereby demonstrating Black women’s inherent humanity. 

Ling O’Donoghue, St. Olaf College

This essay attempts to discuss the causes and effects of left-behind children in Chinese society. Throughout the essay, I argue that the reasons leading to left-behind children are the following: the wealth gap, China’s unique household registration or hùkǒu system that divides rural and urban areas, and the traditional conceptualization of the traditional parental impulse to better their children’s lives. China’s urbanization further exacerbates the wealth gap between the poor and rich. Differences in educational opportunities illuminate the distinction between access to resources available to rural and urban. The matriculation rates of Chinese urban high school graduates attending university are far higher than they are for their rural high school counterparts. Moreover, China’s hùkǒu system not only serves to worsen the wealth gap, but it also restricts population’s mobility. Despite these restrictions, rural parents frequently believe working in the city will help aid their children’s futures. Their sense of parental responsibility motivates them to move to the city in hopes of earning enough money to provide a better life for their children. Their dream is to allow their children to one day attend a city school to earn a better education.

Malaena Caldwell, Oakland University

In Gustave Flaubert’s « Un cœur simple » the significance of the parrot Loulou sparks great scholar interest. The parrot’s purpose can be seen as dependent upon the other characters that surround him. Many argue that the parrot symbolizes the Holy Spirit that leads to Félicité’s transcendence following her loss of Théodore and Victor, who represent the Father and the Son, respectively. But Flaubert’s irony and vivid imagery prepare the reader for Loulou to represent more than the traditional understanding of the Holy Spirit. To this end, this paper focuses on how Félicité is able to distinguish Loulou from the Holy Spirit by highlighting how complete devotion is a common theme in all of her relationships. The impact of her other relationships before the introduction of Loulou in the story leads to consideration of Loulou’s function in the story. Félicité’s ascendance occurs because of her complete devotion to the bird, not because Loulou signifies a religious allegory. This paper argues that Loulou is a separate entity and completes his own cycle of devotion, thereby embodying the ironic tone towards religion which is present throughout Flaubert’s novels. Working backwards, analyzing each relationship as it is presented in the story, this paper demonstrates how the motif of piousness that Félicité displays in every relationship not only pushes her to her death, but also to her own holiness in the end.