Patience Ajeibi Odeh (University of Connecticut)
pati@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This panel seeks abstracts on how minority women have contributed to knowledge in French and Francophone literature. How have minority women developed episteme and/or adapted the popular culture to their invisibility, scarcity, marginality, and language? How do/have French and Francophone minority women writers, artists, painters, stylists, philosophers, theorists, filmmakers, etc., contribute(d) to knowledge?

The Enlightenment presents Marie-Antoinette’s invention of an expensive lifestyle, Louise d'Épinay’s invention of taste and refinement of fashion, Olympe de Gouges’ social reform that challenges conventional views and conception of the role of women as citizens, Émilie du Châtelet’s engagement with episteme, Angélique du Coudray’s pioneering midwifery, etc. Taste, art, fashion, care, style, and savoir-vivre have been within the dictates of the privileged. While their achievements are laudable, they show creativity within a single stratum of society. How about the paysanne, the slave, the servant, the marginal, the minority? These live in the periphery with minimal visibility but full creative capacity, concealed by their social condition. What can a closer examination of these societal strata reveal about women who are marginalized and obscured?