Research Corner: Collaborative Projects  

In this corner Online Newsletter features an interview Doris Kadish and comments about Elizabeth Wright's current research. During 2004-2005 both faculty members at Romance Languages received internal and external funding to dedicate their time to their research projects, both of them with a collaborative component.  

Interview with Doris Kadish, Professor of French and Women Studies

1. Please, briefly describe your current research project. My project focuses on the renewal of abolitionism in France during the Restoration (1815-1830). It attempts to provide answers to the following questions: What are the distinctive features of that writing? How does it differ from its counterparts in other countries? How did antislavery writing contribute to extending the reach of elitist abolitionist organizations? How did antislavery discourse function to form race and class identities? What is the relation between antislavery and colonialism? How did antislavery movements impact the growth of liberalism in France ? How did white women gain a voice and to what effect? What roles were assigned to slave women? How did antislavery writing intersect with the rise of feminism in France ? What is the postcolonial legacy of nineteenth-century antislavery writing? What international impact did that writing have in the nineteenth century and what is its literary and historical significance today? I argue that by extending the reach of early French abolitionism, writers from the period of the Restoration expanded the notion of French nationality. They traced paths for a new society seeking to free itself from ancient regime values and economic interests and paved the way for the reaffirmation of republican government, the emancipation of slaves, and the development of feminism.

2. What is the relationship between this current project and your previous research? I have been working on slavery in the French speaking world for the last ten years. During that time I have published two volumes of essays on the subject— Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French Women's Writing, 1783-1823 (1994), Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities (2000)—and two edited books (the last is forthcoming): Sophie Doin, La Famille noire suivie de trois Nouvelles blanches et noires (2002) and Charlotte Dard, La Chaumière africaine . The current project narrows the focus of that work, which has stretched over five decades and several geographical locations ( France , the United States , Africa, and the Caribbean ).

3. How is the funding that you've been awarded contributing to the development of this project? Currently I have a CHA research grant, which is enabling me to devote myself full time to writing a monograph. I also had a UGARF grant, which enabled me to prepare the Charlotte Dard volume with the assistance of a graduate assistant, Lisa Van Zwoll.

4. How did you become interested in a collaborative project? I have applied for an NEH Collaborative Research Grant to translate parts of the abolitionist material from the French Restoration that I am studying. Earlier in my career, I worked with a team of women to produce Translating Slavery: Gender and Race in French Women's Writing , 1783-1823 (1994). We found that working on race and gender in collaboration with scholars from a variety of races and nationalities was a productive, rewarding project. The new collaborative project will be an extension of that earlier volume. My co-editor, Françoise Massardier-Kenney, will work with me on this project as well. And we have enlisted the participation of an esteemed translator of French poetry, Norman Shapiro of Wesleyan University , because many abolitionist works are in verse.

5. Could you summarize the pros and cons of working in collaborative projects? I see only the pros. But that is perhaps because of the nature of my research, which attempts to make little-known works available to a wide academic audience. It is a type of work that can best be accomplished by scholars working together to achieve a common goal.

6. Based on your experience with this project, what advice would you give to young or future researchers on how to start a research project and where to look for funding? I would advise other researchers to cast their net widely and not choose subjects that are too narrowly defined. Such subjects, especially single authors and even topics concerning single countries, are hard to publish in today's tough publishing climate. Topics need to have an interdisciplinary reach that will make them interesting to a relatively wide range of academics and general readers. Such topics are also more likely to have an appeal to funding organizations.

7. Is your current research project going to have an impact in your teaching? It will enhance my teaching of nineteenth century France and, especially, the courses I teach in Francophone literature and culture. Many contemporary Francophone works look back to the topic of slavery. In my research project, I am working on articulating the connections between nineteenth and twentieth (and twenty first) century works, and I plan to dwell on those connections in my classes.

About Elizabeth Wright, Associate Professor of Spanish collaborative research project

Three years ago, Dr. Elizabeth Wright joined forces with two distinguished Nahuatl scholars, historian Barry D. Sell and anthropologist Louise Burkhart to prepare a scholarly edition of three Spanish plays that a Mexican cleric translated into Nahuatl (the language of the “Aztecs”) in the seventeenth century. Entitled Nahuatl Theater: Spanish Culture in Mexican Translation , they will be published by the Nahuatl Theater Series of the University of Oklahoma Press . Dr. Wright was invited to join this research team based on her previous research on Lope de Vega's literary career; this new project gave her the opportunity to expand her work from the Spanish peninsula to colonial Mexico .