Full Details

Wednesday, September 13

Queer Maghrebi French
Time:
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Presenter:
Denis Provencher, Professor of French, Head of the Department of French and Italian, University of Arizona
Location:
Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning
Sponsored by:
European Studies Center along with Gender Sexuality & Women's Studies Program, Honors College and Humanities Center

Professor Provencher's general lecture will draw from his forthcoming book Queer Maghrebi French, which investigates the lives and stories of queer Maghrebi and Maghrebi French men who moved to or grew up in contemporary France. It combines original French language data from ethnographic fieldwork in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille with a wide array of recent narratives and cultural productions including performance art and photography, films, novels, autobiographies, published letters, and other first-person essays to investigate how these queer men living in France and the diaspora stake claims to time and space, construct kinship, and imagine their own future. By closely examining empirical evidence from the lived experiences of queer Maghrebi French-speaking performance artists, religious thinkers, novelists, and directors, as well as “everyday” (i.e., “non-artistic or non-creative”) study participants, this book presents a variety of paths available to these men who articulate and pioneer their own sexual difference within their families of origin and contemporary French society.