Rosemary A Peters-Hill | Louisiana State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Rosemary A Peters-Hill

Mise au Point : Analyser l'intersectionnalité au cinéma, 2022

My article examines the ways in which colonial history intersects with manifestations of subjecti... more My article examines the ways in which colonial history intersects with manifestations of subjective and narrative memory in the present. I discuss two Netflix original series to trace the development of contemporary responses to intergenerational, intersectional trauma. Hugo Blick’s Black Earth Rising depicts a Rwanda living under the dominion of both external and internal responses to its historical trauma: the corrupt domestic politics of a remade republic confront the power of organizations that erase the details of a past fraught with complexity, while courting a global public’s approval. In Lupin, director George Kay uses the character of Assane Diop to explore the lingering effects of explicitly colonial trauma, and the many-layered ways it continues to play out in racial politics and social divisions – while having recourse to a well-known figure from French popular literature of a different age. Along with a study of the series’ focus on time, memory, and trauma, I address the remaining problematic politics of streaming itself, which – even while claiming to delve into the wrongs wrought by colonial powers upon the developing world – nonetheless prioritizes narratives from the global North in its representation of developing nations, even to the point of limiting those nations’ access to the streaming platforms that claim to offer them global visibility.

It is up to us women to take our fate in our hands in order to overthrow the order established to... more It is up to us women to take our fate in our hands in order to overthrow the order established to our detriment instead of submitting to it. We must, like men, use this weapon, peaceful, of course, but effective, which is writing." Mariama Bâ, La Fonction politique des littératures africaines écrites (1981) Navigating both geographic and linguistic barriers, Mariama Bâ's chef-d'oeuvre So Long a Letter (1979) and Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982) transcend spatial limitations. The works provide unique insight into their historical periods-postindependence Senegal in Bâ's case, the Jim Crow American South in Walker's-and offer scathing critiques of imperial historiographies. Those critiques are "voiced" by letter-writing protagonists who rise from silence to claim both equity and solidarity. Bâ and Walker strategically employ the letter form to challenge literary conventions and archaic notions of female roles and relationships. Over the three decades since So Long a Letter and The Color Purple were published, only a handful of scholars have linked the novels. The two works appeared so closely together that today, we can read them naturally as part of one cultural ethos, despite different languages, countries, and cultures of origin. The critical readings that do examine the texts side by side have studied questions of gender inequity, stylistics, religion, and female empowerment. Threequarters of these readings, we note, come from Africa or the African diaspora; only one was published in the United States-an omission we seek to remedy. 1 Our essay explores the epistolary form as sociopolitical critique. The Color Purple and So Long a Letter highlight the oppression their Black female protagonists experience, complicating traditional ideologies of inclusion and exclusion. We also examine the ways Ramatoulaye (Bâ) and Celie (Walker) create communities of women during and through their narratives. Those communities are far from simple-neither novel traffics in illusion, including one in which the world of women is peaceful or rosy. Some women perpetuate the abuse inflicted by men who have controlled, abused, and betrayed them; others suffer at the narrators' own hands. In both novels, secondary characters underline the importance of reading in a pluralistic, not binary, fashion. Finally, our essay traces connections between the two novels to discuss the idea of a sisterhood of novelists as well. Their contemporaneity stands out precisely because it suggests an empowering literary solidarity that bridges oceans, religions, and languages.

The photograph chosen to illustrate the homepage of this Revue LISA/LISA e-journal number gives a... more The photograph chosen to illustrate the homepage of this Revue LISA/LISA e-journal number gives a foretaste of the reflection underlying this collection of contributions chosen for their multiplicity of approaches, of visions, of testimonies and of points of view, all intertwined in the subtle intricacies of the various narratives of History. Published after the end of hostilities in the Second World War, but apparently dating from some three weeks earlier, before the unconditional surrender, it offers a vision of victory and defeat deliberately intended to appeal to the readers of The War Illustrated, allowing them to contrast their satisfaction at the outcome of the war with the humiliation suffered by their enemies, and thus to feel justifiably proud at this supreme moment of national achievement. The caption plays its part in capturing this joyous mood, reinforcing the message of what was, of course, hardly a casual snapshot taken on the spur of the moment but rather a carefully...

Type de publication: Revue Résumé: Cette revue, ouverte à des orientations et disciplines diverse... more Type de publication: Revue Résumé: Cette revue, ouverte à des orientations et disciplines diverses, a été conçue dans la visée de faire connaître l'oeuvre de Mérimée dans son extraordinaire pluralité culturelle.

French Studies, 2014

This book traces the evolution of the notion of property and theft in nineteenth-century French l... more This book traces the evolution of the notion of property and theft in nineteenth-century French literary works and non-fiction. For the contemporary author, a drastic societal shift after the Revolution led to a rethinking and redefining of these concepts. Whereas in the Ancien Régime property referred mostly to land and was reserved for the nobility, major social changes during the nineteenth century resulted in a broadening of the discussion of property and theft to include larger sections of society and go beyond physical objects. Bourgeois anxiety in respect of objects increased, and intellectual property became a real concern for the majority of authors. Urban development caused thieves to adapt to their new environment and focus their activity on the city. Rosemary A. Peters’s use of both canonical texts and paraliterary genres to explore and analyse such changes reveals a broad and original approach to these issues. She starts by examining three thefts described in Rousseau’s Confessions, showing how these autobiographical episodes serve to underline and criticize Ancien-Régime power structures. Peters then uses an early work of Balzac, Le Code des gens honnêtes, to show that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, thieves proved capable of adapting to the many changes that affected their environment, particularly with regard to surveillance, punishment, and the urban space, and learned to infiltrate public and private spaces without being recognized. She thus presents Balzac’s work as a way to educate and warn inhabitants of urban areas. There is very little mention of works by other major authors such as Victor Hugo or Eugène Sue. Although Peters recognizes that these writers described ‘an underworld’ (p. 11), it would have been helpful if she had defined this milieu by making a comparison with Balzac’s ‘invisible thief ’. With regard to Eugène François Vidocq and the comtesse de Ségur, Peters treats both figures in the same section. She explains the specificity and impact of Vidocq on criminal fiction and on the popular perception of crime, raising the question of the inauthenticity of published works. In the comtesse de Ségur’s work, theft is as much a tool for reaching young female readers and teaching them a moral lesson as it is a way of introducing the discussion of feminine transgression, which becomes essential in the fin de siècle. The final section deals with the question of gender, in which Peters discusses the rise of the middle-class kleptomaniac female as parallelling the development of the department store. While the legal system considered shoplifting to be the result of a mental handicap or disease rather than a crime, literary works such as Zola’s Au bonheur des dames portrayed female thieves stealing out of necessity; these women were therefore difficult to classify and punish. Throughout her study Peters strives to consider both the historical and social context, as well as take into account the development of sciences such as criminology or graphology. The result is a work that offers an extensive and complete understanding of the representation of theft in nineteenth-century France.

Excavatio, 2007

On the threatening Double : The Figure of the Prostitute in Emile Zola's "Nana", Jo... more On the threatening Double : The Figure of the Prostitute in Emile Zola's "Nana", Joseph Von Sternberg's "Der Blaue Engel", and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Lola". A prostitute is a Prostitute is a Prostitute? From the third republic to the Great depression : Outsiders in "Boule de Suif" and "Stagecoach". Coal Miner's Daughters : Representations of Women in "Germinal", "Matewan" and "Harlan County", USA. "Oculi omnium" : Mistery and Spectacle on the Altar and Screen. Eisenstein vs. Dreiser : "An American Tragedy" through the Eyes of a Soviet Film-maker. Realism and Naturalism in "Greed". The Naturalist Horizons of "Nightmare Alley" (1947).

Reconnaissance au Maroc, 1883–1884

In the turbulent 1830s, the young priest Prosper Gueranger determines to restore France's dis... more In the turbulent 1830s, the young priest Prosper Gueranger determines to restore France's dispersed Benedictine community. Gueranger revitalizes a religious community, as well as a thousand years of monastic tradition. He does this work with full knowledge that he will be criticized, in the ethos of postrevolutionary France, for sacrificing the individual to the collective. In the decadent 1890s, Joris-Karl Huysmans writes En route, a novel that continues the narrative of the novelist's alter-ego Durtal. Durtal, disgusted with life in Paris, leaves on retreat to a Trappist monastery, where his soul is "surprised by grace" in the atmosphere of "mystical literature, liturgy and plainchant" (Huysmans qtd. in Baldick 288). Durtal undertakes his own individual 'rebuilding' within the monastic community. My article focuses on the conversion narrative in a century dedicated to the reinforcement of individualism both personal and regional. These author...

Cet article discute de la pratique photographique de deux ecrivains de la fin de siecle : Arthur ... more Cet article discute de la pratique photographique de deux ecrivains de la fin de siecle : Arthur Rimbaud et Emile Zola. Chacun a quitte sa France natale pour vivre un exil soit politique soit voulu, a Harare en Abyssinie (Rimbaud) et a Londres en Angleterre (Zola). Chacun s’est mis a la photographie, et a capte des images de l’espace etranger qui l’a accueilli. Leurs trajectoires, tout en signalant leur diversite, laisse pourtant ouverte la possibilite d’un champ de rencontre ou elles temoignent d’une meme experience, d’un meme enjeu. La representation visuelle d’un ailleurs, forme par des sentiments d’accueil ou d’exclusion, mene a une reinterpretation de l’idee de l’identite nationale, de la “francite”, de la subjectivite meme a cette epoque.

Choice Reviews Online, 2014

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0950236x 2012 658433, Apr 1, 2012

Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, 2010

Women's History Review, 2014