France / Algeria: Gender, Memory, Identity

This panel discusses the relationship between gender, memory and national identity in cultural texts focusing on Franco-Algerian relations. The three speakers will situate specific literary texts and films within the broader contexts of French colonialism and decolonisation with a view to reflecting on the legacy of France’s colonial empire and on how cultural discourses surrounding l’Algérie française have alternately supported and challenged France’s perception of itself.

Aoife Connolly (TU Dublin): ‘Macho Men? Shifting Perceptions of Settler Identity Post-Algerian Independence’.

Barry Nevin (TU Dublin / Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellow): ‘(Re)Visions of the Outre-mer: Looking at the Male Imperial Gaze in Jacques Feyder’s Cinéma Colonial’.

Cliona Hensey (NUI Galway): ‘Transgenerational transmission and the “mnemonic imagination” in writing by descendants of Harkis’.

Mairéad Ní Bhriain (Mary Immaculate College, UL): ‘L’Affaire Djamila Boupacha: Torture and the assertion of the female voice during the Algerian War’.

Chair: Prof. Philip Dine (French, NUI Galway)