Françoise Tusques

 

Françoise Tusques is a senior lecturer at the University of Nantes, France. She specializes in poetry and postcolonial literature

francoise.tusques-venisse@univ-nantes.fr

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Exploring hospitalities and hostilities through an interdisciplinary corpus approach on the Commonwealth with L3 students

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One of the possible takes on the theme of hospitalities/hostilities is a reflection on narratives and representations by both hosting party and guests through time and within the same country. 

We chose to explore the relationships within the triangle Africa-the West Indies-Great Britain between the 18th and the 21st century, looking for resonances between past and present, as well as the new spaces of creativity opened by contacts with other cultures. An additional twist to the past-present theme consisted in the analysis of the resonances between literary and historical documents, chosen for their common underlying theme (e.g. home, belonging, identity, citizenship). 

The paper explores this work undertaken with a class of L3 students as part of their studies on the Commonwealth. It presents the results achieved and the lessons learnt from the groupwork on the interdisciplinary corpus each group chose. The analysis of the work dynamic provides an extra, if unexpected, layer of understanding of hospitalities/hostilities, made up of networks of relationships and understandings between group members, students and lecturers, literary and non-literary documents. It is hoped that unravelling this work can provide the basis for a reflection on both interdisciplinary corpus work and a dynamic, student-based experience of hospitality/hostility.

 

Sylvie NAIL et Françoise TUSQUES-VENISSE

Faculté des Langues et cultures étrangères, Université de Nantes