Creolizing Histories
This seminar will consider creolization in its historical dimensions. We invite papers that explore practices and sites of creolization in eighteenth and nineteenth-century colonial and metropolitan culture. Topics of discussion will include early creole writers; ‘creole’ versus ‘colonial’ literatures; creolization in cultural media including architecture, material culture and performance. We will also address historiographical and theoretical questions associated with the concept of the creole. Papers might, for example, explore the history of this concept in Spanish, French and English discourses, considering the valence of this term at different moments and in different contexts, and its application to various cultural and racial groups. We are particularly interested in papers that creolize history and literary history by reframing dominant national narratives to reflect colonial and transnational experiences. Finally, we are interested in approaches that extend the contemporary theorization of créolité, hybridity and diaspora to earlier historical contexts.
The panel will include a visit to a New Orleans ‘creole’ house, the Madame John’s Legacy, and discussion with historians from the Louisiana State Museum presenting the different ways in which the Museum articulates the concept of creole/creolization in its exhibits and outreach programs.