Contesting the Classroom. Reimagining Education in Moroccan and Algerian Literatures

To RSVP, please click here.

Introduction, Madeleine Dobie

Respondent, Sophia Mo

Contesting the Classroom is the first scholarly work to analyze both how Algerian and Moroccan novels depict the postcolonial classroom, and how postcolonial literatures are taught in Morocco and Algeria. Drawing on a corpus of contemporary novels in French and Arabic, it shows that authors imagined the fictional classroom as a pluralistic and inclusive space, often at odds with the narrow nationalist vision of postcolonial identity. Yet when authors wrote about the school, they also had to consider whether their work would be taught in schools.

Erin Twohig is Assistant Professor of French & Francophone Studies, Georgetown University. Madeleine Dobie is Professor of French & Comparative Literature, Columbia University. Sophia Mo is a PhD candidate in the Department of French and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University.