Literature class schedule: January 28, February 18, March 4, March 18, April 8, April 22 and May 6.

A full breakdown of the works is below. Register now before the class fills up!

This course focuses majority on female writers / poets from the Caribbean or Louisiana who  write in French or Creole. It is a continuation of the fall 2025 semester course. In this class, you  will discover different texts in French or Creole ( with translation) and we will discuss their  similarities and differences and the relationship to orality, language and the world. Some classes will use documentary and film archives to reinforce these points of discussion. 

January 28 

This first session will focus on films/documentaries exploring Louisiana Creole and Caribbean Creole. 

Kouri-Vini: a short series that explores Louisiana's Creole language and the communities that speak it. 20 min.

Soup à pyé: a 15-minute film by Karine Gama about a grandmother and cultural values in creole with subtitles. Guadeloupe, 2013. 

La Veillée: An episode of this PBS series specifically addresses the history and revitalization of Louisiana Creole, discussing its cultural importance and interviewing language advocates.  

February 18

Sybil Kein, also known as Consuela Provost (born Consuela Marie Moore; 1939 – 2022), was  a Louisiana Creole poet, playwright, scholar, and musician.She largely created the field of  Creole Studies through her early publications and presentations. 

Gumbo People is a collection of poetry and songs by the Louisiana Creole scholar, poet, and  musician Sybil Kein, written in Louisiana Creole with translations into other languages like  English, Spanish, French, and Haitian Creole. The book, published in 1999, is also notable for  including sheet music for the songs and was created to document and celebrate the spoken  Louisiana Creole language and culture. 

March 4 

Les Cenelles: a Collection of Poems by Creole Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century by Armand Lanusse. Originally published in 1845, Les Cenelles was the first anthology of poetry featuring the work of Black poets. 

Les Cenelles, published in 1845 in New Orleans, was the first anthology of poetry by Americans  of color. The title’s use of the word “cenelles,” meaning holly or hawthorne berries, suggests  that the volume contains the collected fruit of the Creole community that produced it. Edited by  poet and educator Armand Lanusse (1812–1867), the collection features the work of seventeen New Orleans poets who, like Lanusse, were well-to-do “free people of color”. 

March 18

Oswald Durand (September 17, 1840 – April 22, 1906) was a Haitian poet and politician, said  to be "to Haiti what Shakespeare is to England, and Dante to Italy."He was also a Haitian writer  and poet of French and Creole expression, considered as the national poet of Haiti. Besides he  was also judged as a Romantic poet and the most prolific one in the nineteen centuries. These  20th-century successors such as René Depestre, and Jacques Roumain congratulated Oswald  Durand for his authentic expressions and honored him as a forerunner of Haitian indigenism.

Choucoune (Haitian Creole: Choukoun) is an 1883 poem by Haitian poet Oswald Durand. Its words are in Haitian Creole and became the lyrics to the song Choucoune.  

April 8

Beaudelaine Pierre  

Beaudelaine Pierre’s academic and creative journey explores questions of relational ontologies through the lenses of Afro-Caribbean philosophy and of feminist theory. Through The Politics of Living Haiti, Pierre brings forth a creolized, dehistoricized, and decolonial approach from which more ethical, just, and varied Haitian stories and world stories can be— and are— lived. 

L’enfant qui voulait être président (2012). In this novel, the author takes us to the “outside” world, rural Haiti in the Artibonite region. Through her characters, she shares with us the daily  life of the market and neighborhoods of Saint-Michel-de-l'Attalaye. In rich and expressive Haitian Creole, Beaudelaine chronicles life in a small town under the dictatorship of Baby Doc. The hero's incredible destiny is haunted by Haitian history and the Haitian people's desire to  build a nation for all. 

April 22

Gerty Dambury (born 1957) is a writer, educator and theatre director from Guadeloupe. Since 1981, she has written several plays including Lettres indiennes (1996) translated as Crosscurrents (1997). Her first novel Les rétifs (2012) appeared in English as The Restless in 2018. It is centered on the police violence in French Guadeloupe in 1967. She first taught  English in Guadeloupe and in the Paris region. In 1981, she began writing plays in French or  Creole. Her most famous play, Lettres indiennes, compares Martinique’s immigrant life with that of Guadeloupe. 

Lettres indiennes: an intimate and metaphorical text about the difficulty of returning to the  family fold and traditional values after experiencing the hope of emancipation in the industrial world. 

May 6

Patrick Chamoiseau (b. 1953) is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. His work spans a variety of forms and genres, including novels, essays,  children's books, screenplays, theatre and comics. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992. 

Le conteur, la nuit et le panier (2021). This book is a reflection on the poetic gesture and  artistic creation, centered on the figure of the Creole storyteller and his relationship to orality, language and the world.