An Interview with Françoise Lionnet. Crossing Boundaries, Thinking Intersectionally: Pedagogy, Methodology, and the Challenges of Relationality

ABSTRACT

In this conversation with Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François, literary scholar and critic Françoise Lionnet (Harvard University) discusses both the epistemological implications and methodological challenges of transdisciplinary approaches and transnational frameworks. With direct references to concepts such as métissage, transcolonialism, and minor transnationalism—that have emerged from her own intersectional approach to Francophone studies, postcolonial studies, Comparative Literature, Creole (Creolization) studies, and Gender studies—she exposes the structural limitations of the Area Studies model and its subsequent disciplinary arrangements, to focus on comparison and relationality as critical methodological principles for nurturing more inclusive and interactive readings of literary and artistic expressions across historical and cultural contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Minor transnationalism
• métissage
• creolization
• methodology
• relationality

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François

Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François is the Marian Trygve Freed Early Career Professor in the department of French and Francophone Studies, and an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains (Brill, 2017) and has published numerous articles in scholarly journals such as the PMLA, the International Journal of Francophone Studies, Nouvelles études francophones and Lettres romanes. He is currently at work on a second book project that focuses primarily on contemporary Indian Ocean literary and cultural studies and on the creolization models from this region.