"Barbarian” Women: North African Literary Perspectives on Emancipation

Dr Farah Ben Jemaa (University of Manouba) delivered this seminar at the MEC, chaired by Professor Michael Willis (St Antony’s College), as part of the Gender and Sexuality Seminars series. This talk examines examples of North African literature, from early twentieth-century texts to more recent works. These writings question forms of female emancipation associated with Western norms and imaginaries, while opening space for alternatives rooted in affects and collective experience. The talk will also reflect on the methodological approaches — particularly spatial ones — that may help us read and understand these literary representations. Farah Ben Jemaa is a professeure agrégée of French literature at the University of Tunis. Her research focuses on space and representations of the self in modern and contemporary literature. She completed a PhD in French Literature at the University of Manouba, with a dissertation on spatiality in the work of Valery Larbaud. She has published on authors including Georges Perec, René Char, and Valery Larbaud, as well as on contemporary cultural productions and artistic practices. Her recent work explores alternative cartographies, and the intersections of literature, politics, and feminist critique. She is currently a visiting academic at St Antony’s College for the Trinity term, thanks to the support of the Hazem Ben-Gacem Tunisia-Oxford Cooperation Programme.