FREN 330 - Algérie française, la France algérienne - Fall 2022

This course explores the complex and still unresolved legacies of the French colonization of Algeria (1830-1962) and the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) through close analyses of fiction, art, music, web-documentaries, podcasts, and film. Those histories continue to resonate and inform political debate and notions of personal identity in France and Algeria to the present day. Among the works that we will explore, we will begin with (Algerian-born) Albert Camus’s 1942 classic L’Étranger (which is set in colonial French Algeria), followed by Kamel Daoud’s postcolonial novel from 2015, Meursault, contre-enquête, written in response to and as a reimagining of Camus’s novel from an Algerian perspective. We will then turn our attention to Fatima Daas’s very recent novel The Last One (2021), which focuses on identity, gender, and sexuality from the perspective of a young Franco-Algerian writer in 21st-century Paris. Finally, Franco-Algerian author Leïla Sebbar’s novel La Seine était rouge (1999) explores the presentday legacies of the tangled web of the past. Along with these four primary works, we will also
examine the canonical film La bataille d’Alger by Gillo Pontecorvo and the award winning and controversial films Indigènes and Hors-la-loi by Rachid Bouchareb, in addition to many other works. This course is taught entirely in French, and is cross-listed as an elective course for the MENA minor.
Please contact Philippe Brand at pbrand@lclark.edu with any questions.

Mondays and Wednesdays 3-4:30pm

Fall 2022