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Jana Evans Braziel: Visiting Faculty 2002-2003

Jana Evans Braziel is Five College Fellow in the Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA) and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College for 2002-2003, while on leave from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Braziel has published or forthcoming articles on writers Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, Dany Laferrière, Rita Dove, Flora Balzano, Out-El Kouloub, and Assia Djebar in academic journals (such as Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters; A/B: Auto/Biography Studies; Journal x: a journal in culture and criticism; Tessera; and The Journal of North African Studies), as well as in edited collections. With Anita Mannur, Braziel recently co-edited Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (Blackwell Publishers, forthcoming January 2003). Her book manuscript, Trans-America: Race, Diaspora, and Alterbiography, is currently under review for publication by the University Press of Virginia. Also interested in American cultural studies, Braziel has published on Bessie Smith and Janis Joplin (in Popular Music and Society) and on David Lynch (in a forthcoming volume on the director). In this field, she has also published Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression (University of California Press, 2001), co-edited with Kathleen LeBesco. Courses: ENG 67, Amherst College, Fall 2002 "Race and Revolt in Haiti and the U.S" In this course, we will explore how Vodou (“voodoo”), Haiti, and the Haitian Revolution are apparitional presences in the U.S., forming integral parts of the American cultural, historical, and national imaginary. Because Vodou catalyzed slave revolts in the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), many Americans feared and vilified its subversiveness: Vodou, then, became—in part, remains—one of many sites or repositories for anxieties in the U.S. about race, religion, and revolt. Drawing on literary texts, films, music, journalism, and historical documents, we will examine how Vodou, as a catalyst for transnational insurrection among African diasporic communities in the Americas, was formative in American national identity. The focus of the course will be transnational. Transnationalism may be defined as the flow of people, ideas, goods, and capital across national territories in ways that undermine nationality and nationalism as categories of identification and maps political realities that more aptly speak to the lived experiences of the world and people in the world. ENG 74, Amherst College, Spring 2003 "Citizenship: Migration, Diaspora, and New Forms of Political Belonging" In this course, we will explore contemporary ideas about citizenship as forged across national boundaries in the Americas: specifically, we will examine how ideas about what it means to be and to participate as a citizen change when individuals participate in more than one nation-state, such as individuals of Haitian descent living in Montréal; Cuban descent living in Miami; or Dominican descent in New York. Our primary texts will include short stories, novels, films, journalistic essays, and academic writings. In addition to examining how migration and diaspora challenge traditional notions of citizenship and political belonging, the course will also explore how these movements have been shaped by geopolitical shifts such as decolonization and the end of the Cold War; and by global capitalism and the consolidation of world trade markets through alliances such as the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA) and international regulatory bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF),the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank. We will also explore how transnational grassroots movements for social justice challenge these global formation and actively participate in forging new spaces for citizenship across national territories. Comp Lit 297A/ French 297A / PolSci 297A, UMass Amherst, Spring 2003 “Rethinking the Americas” (From Professor Schwartzwald’s 2001 course description): “A cross-cultural and trans-disciplinary investigation of historic and current interactions among the indigenous, colonizing, and migratory peoples of the Americas. The course provides an introduction to the study of the Americas as a place of triangular exchange and cultural transfer among native peoples, ‘Old World’ societies, and ‘New World’ nationalities. We shall question the many competing and shifting concepts of America reflected in maps and ‘first contact’ narratives as well as in ideological formulations of an imagined ‘American’ identity in influential texts and films. Materials will be selected from Latin American, North American, and Caribbean contexts in order to focus comparative case studies, including those of racial discourses and cultural hybridization across the Americas. The goal of the course is to promote critical thinking about notions of ‘Americanness’ and to create an appreciation for the many crossroads that inform identity in the Americas.” Talks/Colloquia: The Five College Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas will sponsor the interdisciplinary colloquium "Trans-American Crossroads: Haiti and the Making of the Americas" (tentatively scheduled for March 2003) to explore the historical, cultural, literary, and political import of Haiti within the Americas over the last two centuries since the General Slave Revolt of 1791 in colonial Saint Domingue and the establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804.