Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cameroon in literature'

In this thesis I will trace the shifting representations of post-Independence Cameroon through a detailed analysis of the literary texts of two of its most celebrated writers (Mongo Beti and Calixthe Beyala), and the cinematic production of two of its most innovative filmmakers (Jean-Marie Téno and Pierre Békolo).  Theoretically, this study will be informed by both European and African post-colonial criticism, as well as other recent works of feminism, philosophy, and political theory, and will thereby critically engage with both Western and Afrocentric approaches to Sub-Saharan Africa’s literary and cinematic self-representation. The Cameroonian writers and filmmakers that will be the focus of this project provide an opportunity for a kind of critical dialogue between Western and African post-colonial interpretations of Sub-Saharan African cultural texts.  Starting with the theories of Franz Fanon and Albert Memmi on de-colonisation and the preservation of an authentic African identity, I will look at the question of Cameroon’s cultural and national identity, which is often portrayed as Francophone and yet authentically African, as a useful example of the complex nature of post-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa’s self-perception.  Beti’s works (1953-2000) and their representation of a ‘lost’ Cameroonian nation that must be rediscovered fully display this complexity. The novels of Calixthe Beyala stand in stark contrast to the male-centred representation of Cameroon to be found in Beti’s work.  Her celebration of marginal and dispossessed figures directly addresses the marginalising and exclusionary forces at work in most literary representations of Sub-Saharan Africa.  In this section I will use the key post-colonial concepts of marginality, hybridity, and positionality that have been popularised by Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak to assess the extent to which women writers like Beyala have become crucially important to Sub-Saharan Africa’s self conception. Cinema has likewise become increasingly important in Cameroon as a medium of cultural self-representation.  Cameroonian filmmakers have begun to exploit cinema’s power as an effective tool for mass political activism and change.  This has brought about such critically acclaimed films as Téno’s Retours au pays natal (2000), and Békolo’s Le Complot d’Aristote (1996).  In my thesis I will show how these filmmakers respond to the socio-political challenges of Cameroon, and thereby construct a fertile space for dialogical exchange between all producers of cultural texts.  The close analysis of their films will demonstrate the ways in which cinema is inherently bound up with other critical discourses on post colonialism in Africa, and the way in which it is intimately linked to literary concerns in the current period.

À partir des années quatre-vingt, des groupes industriels internationaux entrent dans le capital de maisons d'édition du Nord. C'est le début de ce que l'on appellera la globalisation du livre. Face à la crainte de l'uniformisation des productions éditoriales, on observe l'émergence de réflexions et de projets autour de la bibliodiversité. C'est notamment dans cette dynamique que le marché du livre africain se structure en réseaux pour favoriser la diffusion, la distribution et la coédition de ses productions. Dès la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix, la recherche universitaire s'intéresse de plus en plus à l'arrière-plan des oeuvres littéraires africaines. Derrière chaque ouvrage se situent des institutions, des économies, des stratégies d'auteurs, etc., qu'il est important de prendre en considération. Ce travail s'intéresse d'abord à la relation de la production littéraire africaine avec le marché global du livre. Dans un second-temps, notre recherche étudie le cas du marché du livre camerounais et sa cohérence en tant que système éditorial participant à l'économie littéraire nationale, sous-régionale et internationale
Since the eighties, international industrial firms enter North publishing houses' capital. This was the beginning of what is called book globalization. That process raises a standardization fear of published material; it also involves the emergence of thoughts and projects concerning bibliodiversity. In that context, African book's market has been structured in different kind of networks with the goal of sustaining its diffusion/distribution. On the end of the nineties, scholar researches increase their interest for African literature production's background. Behind each book, we find institutions, economies, authors' strategies, which are important to take in account. In this present work, we will consider the relations between African literary productions and Global book's market. Secondly, our work will focus on Cameroonian book's market as an editorial system, and will question its participation to the economy of literature at national, regional and international scales

Produites dans une période de questionnement sur l'identité de l'homme et de l'écrivain, les nouvelles littéraires de François Mauriac et de Sévérin Cécile Abéga présentent un imaginaire tantôt symétrique, tantôt non, mais éclairant du rapport entre l'écrivain, son espace et son identité. Le sujet, "(Dis)continuités des identités et imaginaires en francophonie littéraire : étude comparée des nouvelles de Sévérin Cécile Abéga et de François Mauriac " pose le problème des modes de transfiguration des identités et de l'imaginaire dans la nouvelle littéraire francophone. L'hypothèse en est qu'en francophonie littéraire, la pluralité des lieux culturels se reflète dans la diversité d'un genre et implique une certaine cohérence. Cette étude interroge la représentation du cadre spatial et des personnages, les systèmes de valeurs de la société et du genre dans deux postures différentes. Les sujets de cette étude la destine à la critique des imaginaires, et cette approche est enrichie par d'autres lectures comparatistes. Ainsi, on constate que les périodes pendant lesquelles l'écrivain se trouve à la rencontre de tensions historiques,idéologiques et littéraires latentes sont celles où l'imagination créatrice de la nouvelle est réelle. On peut aussi établir que l'espace de la nouvelle est essentiellement celui des auteurs, mais qu'il s'agit d'un espace de désenchantement. Cet univers de déconstruction de l'être implique un univers idéal, un ailleurs qui est chez Mauriac en Dieu et chez Abéga est dans la justice sociale. Les personnages, empêtrés dans cet univers en épousent les valeurs,ce qui entraîne irrémédiablement leur chute. La seule planche de salut est l'humilité,l'ouverture vers le savoir nouveau (le modernisme par exemple) sans reniement de son ancrage identitaire. Abéga comme Mauriac sont donc pour une mixité décomplexée.

Balikumbat and Bafanji are the names of two villages in the Northwest Region of Cameroon that have been warring against one another over Bangang, a tract of fertile land. The conflict hinges on perceived differences about who should have access to this fertile land. Both villages claim ownership. This conflict has persisted from colonial times to the present with no tangible resolution. Understanding the place of land within the political, social, and economic fabric of the lives of both villages prior to and after the arrival of the colonial administration is the centerpiece of this research endeavor. This study sheds light on why the conflict persists. The land tenure decree of 1973, which was later promulgated into Cameroon law in 1984, is the most recent attempt at resolving disputes over land. It did not resolve this conflict. A clash of cultures between the indigenous population and the European colonizers may have triggered a legacy of land conflict between these two communities. This study unravels and seeks to explain when the Balikumbat and Bafanji villages transitioned from being two loving neighbors, capable of sharing their use of and kinship to the land, to hostile enemies ready to fight and kill one another at the earliest opportunity. In this study, interviews, observations, journal intakes, field notes, as well as document reviews, are pivotal tools used in justifying the claims highlighted in the research.

Il est des événements qui, comme des traumas, s’incrustent dans la mémoire et la prennent en otage, entremêlant les approches individuelles et collectives. L’esclavage, la colonisation, les séries de guerres et de génocides qui ont marqué le continent africain en font partie. Du tréfonds de leurs ruines respectives, l’auteur malgache Raharimanana et l’écrivain camerounais Patrice Nganang décident de réinvestir les méandres de l’Histoire. La notion de frontière disparaît, car ils se trouvent unis par le lien du sang répandu, échappant ainsi, par leurs créations, à l’enfermement spatial et temporel. S'il convient de retracer l’itinéraire d’un passé qui défie le temps, c'est pour questionner le présent et l’avenir. Comment alors dénoncer la cruauté si ce n’est par le biais d’une dynamique de la violence ? Ils optent pour une écriture de l’horreur et de l’abjection – chacun à leur manière –, dans laquelle la férocité pour l’un côtoie un humour tragi-comique pour l’autre. Une esthétique du risque et de la subversion, une « écriture-miroir » qui, en scrutant l’Homme, lui révèle son fond immonde, souvent plus animal qu’humain. Les mots expriment les maux les plus évidents, la nécrose et la névrose s’emparent des personnages et servent à témoigner des exactions et des abus de pouvoir. La folie se veut esthétique et transgressive, dans une surenchère qui provoque le ressassement, l’imbrication des récits et la vindicte. Ils proposent des œuvres renvoyant à des faits historiques, sans pour autant être des livres d’histoire, et revendiquent le droit de brouiller les pistes entre fiction et réalité ; de revenir sur les blessures antérieures pour alerter sur les hécatombes actuelles et futures. Les notions d’engagement et d’implication, même si elles se rejoignent, sont émises clairement et de façon singulière. De même que les rapports qu’ils entretiennent avec la littérature et les autres sciences humaines, suscitant de nombreuses réflexions épistémologiques, quant à la délimitation des genres littéraires, notamment
There are events, such as traumas, that become embedded in memory and take it in hostage, intertwining individual and collective approaches. Slavery, colonization, the series of wars and genocides that have marked the African continent are part of them. From the depths of their respective ruins, the Malagasy author Raharimanana and the Cameroonian writer Patrice Nganang decide to reinvest the twists and turns of History. The notion of frontier disappears, as they find themselves united by the bond of bloodshed, thus escaping, through their creations, from spatial and temporal confinement. If it is appropriate to retrace the itinerary of a past that defies time, it is to question the present and the future. How then to denounce cruelty if not through a dynamic of violence? They opt for a writing of horror and abjection - each in their own way -, in which ferocity for one stands side by side with tragic-comic humour for the other. An aesthetics of risk and subversion, a “mirror-writing” which, by scrutinizing Man, brings forth his filthy underbelly, often more beastly than human. Words express the most obvious evils; necrosis and neurosis take hold of the characters and serve to bear witness to exaction and abuse of power. Madness is aesthetic and transgressive, in an escalation that provokes endless reiteration, the interweaving of narratives and vindictiveness. They propose works that refer to historical facts, without being history books, and claim the right to confuse fiction and reality; to return to past injuries to warn of current and future hecatombs. The concepts of commitment and involvement, even if they are similar, are clearly expressed and in a singular way. As well as their relationship with literature and other human sciences, they give rise to many epistemological reflections on the delimitation of literary genres, in particular

La necessitat d'adoptar el mètode interactiu en les pràctiques lectores s'ha de considerar com una pràctica fonamental si volem millorar la competència lectora dels aprenents. La gran preocupació d'aquest estudi és la millora de les pràctiques lectores en l'Ensenyament Secundari al Camerun. Per aquest motiu, el propòsit d'aquesta investigació s'orienta a analitzar les pràctiques lectores a les aules del 3r curs d'E/LE en la secundària. Per a tal fi, hem utilitzat dos instruments: el qüestionari i l'observació amb la seva respectiva guia. Els resultats han indicat que els factors que dificulten l'aprenentatge d'aquesta habilitat tenen més pes que els que ho faciliten. Aquestes dificultats es refereixen, d'una banda, al programa oficial, als manuals escolars, i de l'altra, als docents. Davant d'aquestes limitacions, es suggereix una proposta globalitzadora en els següents àmbits: polític, familiar i àulic.
La necesidad de adoptar el método interactivo en las prácticas lectoras debe considerarse como una práctica fundamental si queremos mejorar la competencia lectora de los aprendientes. La gran preocupación de este estudio es la mejora de las prácticas lectoras en la Secundaria en Camerún. De ahí que el propósito de esta investigación se oriente a analizar las prácticas lectoras en las aulas del 3er curso de E/LE. Para tal fin, los instrumentos utilizados han sido: el cuestionario y la observación. Los resultados han indicado que los factores que dificultan el aprendizaje de esta habilidad tienen más peso que los que lo facilitan. Estas dificultades se refieren, por un lado, al programa oficial, a los manuales escolares y por otro, a los docentes. Frente a estas limitaciones se sugiere una propuesta globalizadora en los siguientes ámbitos: político, familiar y áulico.
The need to adopt the interactive method in reading practices must be considered as a fundamental practice if we want to improve the reading competence of the students. This study aimed to improve the reading practices in Secondary Education in Cameroon. Hence, the purpose of this research is to analyze the reading practices in the classrooms of the 3rd year of Spanish in high school. For this purpose, we have used two instruments: the questionnaire and the observation with its respective guide. The results have indicated that the factors that hinder the learning of the reading comprehension have more weight than those that facilitate it. These difficulties refer, on the one hand, to the official program, the school textbooks and on the other, the teachers. Faced with these limitations, a globalizing proposal is recommended: in the political sphere and in the field of the classroom and the families.

In the late 1990s, the donor community espoused a new metanorm, poverty reduction. Against this backdrop, Lionel Jospin, elected French Prime Minister in 1997, promised a shift in French aid policy away from a paternalistic and interest-driven approach towards a more needs-focused, empowering strategy. This thesis asks, with reference to the 1997-2015 period and to the Cameroonianian case, how far, how and why France’s aid discourse on poverty reduction and empowerment has been translated into practice. Our introduction sets out this research question. Our literature review demonstrates that there have been no detailed studies of French aid to Cameroon and looks more broadly at research on French coopération, empowerment and African agency. Chapter three identifies our methodological and theoretical framework, focusing particularly on neo-classical realism and a template of hard, soft and smart power. Chapter 4 shows how French aid sructures and instruments were neo-colonial in the early post-colonial decades. It then highlights reforms under Jospin and President Jacques Chirac’s second term, paying particular attention to the aid instruments deployed in Cameroon and their ‘fitness for the purpose’. Chapter 5 sets out the aid promises of French Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, identifying the reformist pressures they faced. Chapter 6 explains why important but ultimately limited changes took place in the French assistance programme to Cameroon. Drawing on a neoclassical realist framework, it shows how the French policy-making establishment was divided between the conservative old guard resisting and modernisers promoting aid conditionalities. Chapter 7 addresses weaknesses in the NCR framework, notably its crude definition of power and failure to include African agency. It shows how francophone Cameroonian elites facilitate or constrain the implementation of French aid. Our conclusion summarises our findings, identifies future aid trends and explores the wider significance of this research.

Hoy en día, la finalidad universal del aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras es el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa en los discentes. No obstante, cabe admitir que la adquisición de esa competencia comunicativa no siempre se da al final del proceso de aprendizaje. En este sentido, sea cual sea el contexto de aprendizaje, no es sorprendente encontrar un gran número de estudiantes que, después de pasarse toda la Educación Secundaria aprendiendo una lengua extranjera, se muestre incapaz de mantener una mínima conversación en la misma al finalizar esta etapa de aprendizaje. Qué es lo que falla es una de las preguntas que forma parte del hilo conductor de nuestra investigación. Los resultados a los que llegamos, y que son explicados detalladamente en esta Tesis Doctoral, nos permiten plantear unas propuestas de intervención didácticas contundentes de cara a mejorar la calidad de la enseñanza/aprendizaje del español en la Educación Secundaria y la formación del profesorado de ELE en Camerún. La presente Tesis Doctoral se enmarca dentro del estudio de las creencias del alumnado/profesorado, una línea de investigación relativamente novedosa en el ámbito de ELE pero que tomó su impulso en el campo de la didáctica de idiomas, en concreto en la tradición investigadora y educativa anglosajona, a mediados de los años 80 con la publicación de los estudios pioneros de Horwitz (1985) y Wenden (1986). Se trata de un campo de estudio que estipula que las creencias son el soporte de gran parte de las decisiones, acciones y actuaciones conscientes o inconscientes de los discentes/docentes en el aula. De ahí su crucial importancia para ahondar y reflexionar sobre el proceso de enseñanza/aprendizaje de las lenguas.
Nowadays, the universal objective of learning foreign languages is the development of the communicative competence of the learners. Nevertheless, it is important to notice that the acquisition of that competence is not always guaranteed at the end of the learning process. In this regard, whatever the learning context, it is not surprising to find students who are not able to hold even a simple conversation in a given foreign language even though they have studied that language all through their secondary education. What goes wrong is one of the main questions that will guide this research. The results we have achieved and which are presented in further details in this Doctorate Thesis permit us to make proposals for pedagogically decisive interventions which aim at ameliorating the standard and quality of Spanish teaching/learning in Secondary Education and the training of teachers in Cameroon. This work is enrolled in the study line of learners’/teachers’ beliefs. This is a relatively recent research line in the SFL domain even though it took off in the area of languages’ didactic, precisely in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of research and education in the middle of the 80 thanks to the publication of the pioneer studies of Horwitz (1985) and Wenden (1986). This domain of study stipulates that most of learners’/teachers’ conscious or unconscious decisions, actions and conducts within the classrooms are based on their beliefs. This is why it is crucial to study in depth their importance on languages teaching/learning process.
Avui dia, la finalitat universal de l'aprenentatge de llengües estrangeres és el desenvolupament de la competència comunicativa en els discents. No obstant això, cal admetre que l'adquisició d'aquesta competència comunicativa no sempre es dóna al final del procés d'aprenentatge. En aquest sentit, sigui el que sigui el context d'aprenentatge, no és sorprenent trobar un gran nombre d'estudiants que, després de passar-se tota l'Educació Secundària aprenent una llengua estrangera, es mostri incapaç de mantenir una mínima conversa en la mateixa en finalitzar aquesta etapa d'aprenentatge. Què és el que falla és una de les preguntes que forma part del fil conductor de la nostra recerca. Els resultats als quals arribem, i que són explicats detalladament en aquesta Tesi Doctoral, ens permeten plantejar unes propostes d'intervenció didàctiques contundents de cara a millorar la qualitat de l'ensenyament/aprenentatge de l'espanyol a l'Educació Secundària i la formació del professorat d'ELE a Camerun. La present Tesi Doctoral s'emmarca dins de l'estudi de les creences de l'alumnat/professorat, una línia de recerca relativament nova en l'àmbit d'ELE però que va prendre el seu impuls en el camp de la didàctica d'idiomes, en concret en la tradició investigadora i educativa anglosaxona, a mitjan anys 80 amb la publicació dels estudis pioners de Horwitz (1985) i Wenden (1986). Es tracta d'un camp d'estudi que estipula que les creences són el suport de gran part de les decisions, accions i actuacions conscients o inconscients dels discents/docents a l'aula. D'aquí la seva crucial importància per aprofundir i reflexionar sobre el procés d'ensenyament/aprenentatge de les llengües.

My dissertation critiques Western culture’s vertical command of “growing up” to adult completion (rational, heterosexual, married, wealthy, professionally successful) as a reductionist itinerary of human movement leading to subjective sedimentations. Rather, my project proposes ways of “moving rhizomatically” by which it advances a notion of a machinic identity that moves continuously, contingently, and waywardly along less vertical, less excruciating and more horizontal, life-affirmative trails. To this end, my thesis proposes a “rhizomatic semiosis” as extrapolated from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to put forward a notion of language and, by implication, subjectivity, as dynamic and metamorphic. Rather than trying to figure out who the child is or what it experiences consciously, my project wishes to embrace an elusiveness at the heart of subjectivity to argue for continued identity creation beyond the apparently confining parameters of adulthood. This dissertation, then, is about the need to re-examine our ways of growing beyond the lines of teleological progression. By turning to Deleuze’s child, an intangible one that “makes desperate attempts to carry out a performance that the psychoanalyst totally misconstrues” (A Thousand Plateaus 13), I wish to shift focus away from the hierarchical, binary, and ideal model of “growing up” and toward a notion of movement that makes way for plural identities in their becoming. This endeavour reveals itself in particular in the work of John Wray, Todd Field, Peter Cameron, Sara Prichard, Michael Cunningham, and Cormac McCarthy, whose work has received little or no attention at all—a lacuna in research that exists perhaps due to these artists’ innovative approach to a minor literature that promotes the notion of a machinic self and questions the dominant modes of Western culture’s literature for, around, and of children.

Catherine the Great, The Empress of Russia, considered herself to be an enlightened ruler. Like many enlightened minds of the eighteenth century, she was fascinated with classical antiquity, especially with ancient Rome. In 1779, she invited a Scottish architect named Charles Cameron to complete a series of building projects for her that would create a "second Rome" in Tsarskoye Selo and in Pavlovsk, Russia. Cameron, an expert on classical antiquity because of his studies of the Roman ruins and the publication of his book, The Baths of the Romans, had a special interest in and a dedication to classical antiquity, desiring to make Catherine's Rome as "authentic" as possible. Cameron's expertise was not the only reason why Catherine hired him and made him her imperial architect; Catherine was also fascinated with his background as a Scottish aristocrat and the leader of the Lochiel clan in exile. However, Cameron falsified his identity as a Highlander to make himself more attractive to Catherine; in addition, his own skill in creating an entirely new identity made him more qualified to produce a simulation of Rome that would seem real. Catherine's fascination with Cameron could also be explained by the fact that both Catherine and Cameron were foreigners trying to validate their presence in Russia through their identities. But regardless of Cameron's true identity, his wonderful buildings are great contributions to the eighteenth century neoclassicism.

This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The works discussed were published between 1863 and 1908 and include travelogues by John Hanning Speke, Verney Lovett Cameron, Henry Morton Stanley, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Ewart Scott Grogan, Mary Hall and Constance Larymore. The author argues that objects are deeply involved in the construction of pre-modern and modern spheres that the travelling subject moves between. The objects in the travel accounts are studied in relation to a contextual background of Victorian commodity and object culture, epitomised by the 1851 Great Exhibition and the birth of the modern anthropological museum. The four analysis chapters investigate the roles of objects in ethnographical and geographical writing, in ideological discussions about the transformative powers of colonial trade, and in narratives about the arrival of the book in the colonial periphery. As the analysis shows, however, objects tend not to behave as they are expected to do. Instead of marking temporal differences, descriptions of objects are typically unstable and riddled with contradictions and foreground the ambivalence that characterises colonial literature.

En aquesta tesi ens proposem analitzar les pràctiques avaluatives que els docents d’espanyol llengua estrangera (ELE) duent a terme a les aules d’ensenyament secundari de Camerun, així com proposar algunes possibles millores. Actualment l’avaluació de l’aprenentatge s’enfoca, no només en l’adquisició de coneixements, sinó també en el desenvolupament de les habilitats i actituds que necessiten els discents per tal d’ésser capaços d’actuar de manera competent. Per tant, l’avaluació de l’aprenentatge de l’espanyol consisteix en valorar la competència comunicativa que ha desenvolupat l’estudiant. Tanmateix, el context camerunès, caracteritzat per la utilització de l’enfocament tradicional, no fomenta les pràctiques didàctiques modernes (mètode nocional – funcional, enfocament comunicatiu i enfocament per tasques) en l’avaluació de les llengües estrangeres: hom valora més la comprensió lectora i l’expressió escrita que l’expressió oral i la comprensió auditiva. Els resultats obtinguts en una enquesta que hem realitzat a un total de 150 docents i 6 inspectors d’ELE confirmen que el professorat camerunès avalua preferentment els coneixements lingüístics teòrics que la pràctica comunicativa dels alumnes. . Per tot això, en aquest treball proposem algunes tècniques i alguns instruments quantitatius i qualitatives amb la finalitat de millorar l’avaluació de les llengües estrangeres en general i de l’espanyol en particular, en el context camerunès.
Esta tesis pretende analizar las prácticas evaluativas que los docentes de español lengua extranjera (ELE) llevan a cabo en las aulas de la enseñanza secundaria camerunesa, y proponer algunas soluciones de mejora. Actualmente la evaluación del aprendizaje, se enfoca no sólo en la adquisición de conocimientos, sino también al desarrollo de las habilidades y actitudes que necesitan desarrollar los discentes para actuar de manera competente. Así pues la evaluación del aprendizaje de español consiste en valorar la competencia comunicativa de los discentes. Sin embargo, el contexto camerunés caracterizado por el uso del enfoque tradicional, no fomenta las prácticas didácticas modernas en la evaluación de lenguas extranjeras. Los resultados obtenidos en una encuesta que hemos realizado a un total de 150 docentes y 6 inspectores de ELE confirman que el profesorado camerunés evalúa más los conocimientos lingüísticos teóricos que la competencia comunicativa de los alumnos. Por todo ello en este trabajo proponemos algunas técnicas y algunos instrumentos cuantitativos y cualitativos para que mejoren la evaluación de lenguas extranjeras en general y del español en particular en el contexto camerunés.
The present PhD dissertation aims to analyse the assessment practices that Spanish as a foreign language teachers carry out in the classrooms of Cameroonian secondary schools, and to propose some improvement solutions. Currently, the assessment of learning focuses not only on the acquisition of knowledge, but also on the development of skills and attitudes that students need to act competently. Thus, the assessment of learning Spanish as a foreign language consists of assessing the communicative competence developed by the students. However, the Cameroonian context characterized by the use of traditional approach learning, does not encourage modern didactic practices (notional - functional method, communicative approach and The results obtained in the surveys carried out by teachers of Spanish as a foreign language (ELE) inspectors confirm that the Cameroonian teachers assess more the linguistic knowledge than the communicative competence of the students. Therefore, in this dissertation, we propose some techniques and some quantitative instruments and qualitative in order to improve the assessment of foreign languages in general and of Spanish in particular in the Cameroonian context.

El propòsit d'aquest estudi és explorar i diagnosticar la competència digital dels estudiants de primer i segon cicle dels estudis d'Espanyol com Llengua Estrangera, de l'Escola Normal Superior de Yaoundé, Camerun. El treball consta de quatre parts principals: la contextualització, el marc teòric, el marc d’aplicació i una proposta didàctica. Hem utilitzat una metodologia mixta, explicativa i seqüencial. Les dades van ser recopilades per mitjà d'un qüestionari i un grup de discussió. Segons els resultats obtinguts, la majoria dels estudiants disposen d'un nivell de competència digital intermedi. El nivell inicial va ser autopercebut en accions vinculades a l'ús pedagògic de les TIC. En el grup de discussió, els participants van revelar que no utilitzen les TIC en la seva formació i que els mètodes d'ensenyament-aprenentatge són tradicionals. Per adaptar la seva formació a l'era digital, caldrà que les autoritats a càrrec de l'educació renovin les infraestructures, canviïn les metodologies d'ensenyament-aprenentatge i que la formació contínua dels formadors sigui adaptada a les necessitats de l’era digital.
El propósito del presente estudio es explorar y diagnosticar la competencia digital de los estudiantes de primer y segundo ciclo de los estudios del Español como Lengua Extranjera de la Escuela Normal Superior de Yaundé, Camerún. El trabajo consta de cuatro partes principales: la contextualización, el marco teórico, el marco aplicativo y una propuesta didáctica. Hemos utilizado una metodología mixta, explicativa, secuencial. Los datos fueron recopilados mediante un cuestionario y un grupo de discusión. Según los resultados obtenidos, la mayoría de los estudiantes disponen de un nivel de competencia digital intermedio. Pero, el nivel inicial fue particularmente autopercibido en acciones vinculadas al uso pedagógico de las TIC. En el grupo de discusión, los participantes revelaron que no utilizan las TIC en su formación, y que los métodos de enseñanza-aprendizaje son tradicionales. Para adaptar su formación se adapte a la era digital, será necesario que las autoridades a cargo de la educación renueven las infraestructuras, cambien las metodologías de enseñanza-aprendizaje y que la formación continua de los formadores sea adaptada a las necesidades de la era digital.
The purpose of this study is to explore and diagnose the digital competence of undergraduate and graduate students of Spanish as foreign language studies from the École Normale Supérieure of Yaoundé. This work has four main sections: contextualization, theoretical framework, application framework and a didactic proposal. We have used a mixed methodology, explanatory and sequential. The data was collected through a questionnaire and discussion group. According to the results obtained, most of the students have an intermediate level of digital competence. However, the initial level was particularly self-perceived in actions related to the pedagogical use of ICT. The analysis in the discussion group, revealed firstly, that the students do not use ICT in their training and secondly, the teaching-learning methods are traditional. To adapt their training to the digital age, it will be necessary for the authorities in charge of education to renew the infrastructures, change the teaching-learning methodologies and adapt the continuous training of trainers to the needs of the digital age.

Through an in-depth analysis of selected texts, this study engages with the ways in which the Anglophone Cameroonian playwright, Bole Butake, interprets questions of gender, sex and female power. The study traces the evolution of Butake’s vision of women from his first play Betrothal without Libation (1982) to his latest play Family Saga (2005). The analysis focuses on how women construct power in the imaginary worlds of Butake’s writing and how, in turn, power is constructed through them. Questions of femininities and masculinities are probed in an effort to determine the writer’s ideological leanings. Using a feminist framework, particularly that postulated by acclaimed scholar Florence Stratton (1994), this work engages with Butake’s nine published plays with the simple objective of deconstructing the different layers of meanings embedded in the dramatic narratives’ construction of power politics within urban and rural spaces. This study aims to critique not only Butake’s use of imagery, allegory and other narrative techniques in his creative imagining of women’s identities, but also the gender implications of hierarchical formations within the worlds of Butake’s plays. Essentially, the thesis looks at Butake’s constructions of female power and women’s agency and the implications these have on feminist discourses.

Notre analyse du rôle de l’association La ronde des poètes dans la lutte pour l’autonomie de la littérature camerounaise s’est appuyée sur l’approche sociologique de Pierre Bourdieu pour qui la société est constituée de champs spécifiques en lutte les uns contre les autres pour atteindre un statut privilégié dans le champ social, ce qui constitue un aspect de leur autonomie. Selon Bourdieu, l’étude des manifestations de l’autonomie des champs littéraires devrait tenir compte de toutes les actions entreprises par les agents dudit champ. En effet, ces différentes actions ne sont que des stratégies de lutte. Seulement, d’après Jacques Dubois, l’autonomie des littératures nationales n’est acquise que lorsque celles-ci possèdent un appareil institutionnel propre capable d’assurer seul la production et la diffusion des œuvres, la légitimation et la consécration des écrivains. Si toutes ces conditions réunies échappent encore à plusieurs littératures de l’Afrique subsaharienne, il n’en demeure pas moins que ces dernières sont engagées dans un processus de lutte pour leur autonomie, ce que prouve l’exemple de La ronde des poètes, notre prétexte pour observer les manifestations de l’autonomie au sein du champ littéraire camerounais. Les stratégies de lutte de La ronde des poètes sont d’émergence et de fonctionnement. Pour le premier cas, la formule associative qui donne plus de possibilités que ne pourrait avoir un auteur isolé, le choix de la poésie aussi qui est un genre dont la production des œuvres ne nécessite pas de gros moyens financiers, nous sont apparus comme des stratégies ayant permis aux membres de La ronde des poètes de devenir des écrivains dans un contexte de production défavorable. De plus, par leurs textes fondateurs, ils se définissent comme un groupe ayant un programme d’action bien établi. Par ailleurs, ils attirent sur eux l’attention en se proclamant avant-gardistes et, pour le montrer, publient des manifestes et se détournent, idéologiquement parlant, de la poétique de la négritude dont la fixation sur la race a dominé la création littéraire pendant plusieurs décennies en Afrique. Les stratégies d’émergence de La ronde des poètes ont travaillé à l’identification de cette association comme un élément du champ littéraire camerounais ayant sa place aux côtés d’autres acteurs existant déjà dans ce champ. Pour ce qui est des stratégies de fonctionnement, La ronde des poètes s’est dotée d’un statut légal en se faisant enregistrer auprès des autorités camerounaises, ce qui la consolide dans son champ social. Sur le plan littéraire, ses membres lui confèrent un caractère institutionnel en créant en son sein des formes d’instances littéraires. Leurs ateliers d’écriture assurent la création des œuvres, les instances de diffusion prennent chez eux la forme d’un bulletin hebdomadaire, « Le rondin », mais surtout d’une revue, Hiototi : Revue camerounaise de poésie, de lettres et de culture. Cette revue recueille les articles de critiques littéraires formés à La ronde des poètes et de ceux du Cameroun. Le « Prix de la poésie rondine » est leur instance de consécration interne. Cette association réussit ainsi à obtenir la reconnaissance de pairs, poètes et écrivains camerounais et étrangers, celle aussi d’autorités camerounaises et internationales. En somme, la réunion de ces instances institutionnelles montre combien la marche vers l’autonomie de la littérature camerounaise en général est réelle.
Our analysis of the role of the association The Round of Poets in the struggle for the autonomy of the Cameroonian literature was based on the sociological approach of Pierre Bourdieu for whom our society is made up of specific fields fighting against one another to reach a privileged status in the social field, which is an aspect of their autonomy. According to Bourdieu, the study of the autonomy of literary fields should take into account all the actions taken by the agents of a field. Indeed, these actions are all control strategies. Only, according to Jacques Dubois, the autonomy of national literatures is achieved when they have their own institutional apparatus capable by themselves of providing the production and distributing of works, the legitimation and consecration of writers. If African literatures cannot fulfill all these conditions, it remains that they are engaged in a process of struggle for their autonomy. The example of The Round of Poets shows that, this association being our excuse to observe the manifestations of autonomy within the Cameroonian literary field. Control strategies of The Round of Poets are appearance and operating strategies. For the first case, the associative formula that gives more opportunities than could have an isolated author, and also, the choice of poetry as a genre where the production of works does not require large financial resources, have emerged as strategies which allowed the members of The Round of Poets to become writers in an unfavorable production environment. In addition, by their founding documents, they define themselves as a group with an agenda established. Moreover, they draw attention to them by proclaiming avant-garde. To show this, they publish manifestos, and turn away, ideologically speaking, from the poetics of Negritude whose fixation on race dominated the literary creation during decades in Africa. The strategies of appearance of The Round of Poets worked to identify this association as part of the Cameroonian literary field and having its place alongside other components already existing in this field. For the second case which regards operating strategies, The Round of Poets obtained a legal status by registering with the Cameroonian authorities, which action consolidates this group in its social field. On the literary side, its members give it an institutional character by creating instances relating thereto. Their writing workshops provide creative works; their instances of dissemination appear in the form of a weekly newsletter, “The Rondin”, but also as a review, Hiototi: Cameroon Journal of Poetry, Literature and Culture. This review collects articles from literary critics trained in The Round of Poets and of those of Cameroon. The “Prize of the Rondine Poetry” is their instance of internal consecration. Hence, this association has managed to get the recognition of peers which are Cameroonian and foreign poets and writers, as the Cameroonian and international authorities. In short, the combination of these institutional instances shows how the movement towards autonomy of Cameroonian literature in general is real.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Tennyson, and Virginia Woolf: three major figures of British art and letters who have received much critical attention individually, but have not yet been studied together. In this project I consider the valedictory works of these artists at their convergence, first through their obvious geographic, familial, and aesthetic relationships, then in more subtle, deeper, and overarching dimensions. The chief texts that are the focus of this dissertation are Tennyson's Idylls of the King, plus five of the Laureate's most popular poems; Cameron's photographic illustrations of these poems; and a selection of Virginia Woolf's late work, with a focus on "The Searchlight," Three Guineas, Between the Acts, and Anon. The dissertation also makes use of apposite poems, essays, life writing, and fiction created by these artists. Since "The Theatre of Anon" focuses primarily on Cameron's Illustrations, a chapter containing photographs of all the books' pages concludes the dissertation text. An additional selection of images is included as an appendix, in support of the central thesis of this project. The complex friendship between Tennyson and Cameron inspired the latter's only published book, a collection of poetic excerpts accompanied by images of his poems staged as scenes from amateur theatricals. The photos, with the photographer acting as their playwright-director, evoke the literary pageant in Woolf's last novel. In photographing the Illustrations, Cameron took control of the Laureate's poetry, metaphorically assuming the role of Vivien stealing Merlin's poetic spells. This dissertation traces Woolf's perception of her great aunt as it evolved over the decades, beginning with the eccentric, affected, and comical Cameron of Freshwater (1926) and ultimately portraying her as a dynamic, determined, and creative artist who helped provide inspiration for the character of the playwright-director Miss La Trobe of Between the Acts (1940). I argue that her great aunt's work influenced Woolf to create the figure she called Anon as a counterpart to Tennyson's King Arthur, and to place La Trobe's pageant-play at the center of her last novel, Between the Acts, as a final act of homage to Cameron. An aggregate of all anonymous minstrels, artists, and authors who ever lived, Anon appears in the guise of Miss La Trobe, whose communal, participatory art demonstrates how the traditionally monocular "eye" of history can be enlarged in community theatre from a single "I" to a collaborative project accommodating multiple perspectives. The Arthurian chivalry to which the ideology of Anon is set in counterpoint represents a conservative point of view based on the belief in a divinely-ordained social order headed by a monarch, with prescribed roles for each of its members. Valor in combat and devotion in courtly love, chivalry's two chief expressions, are the basis of Arthur's knightly code, which has influenced British national character and identity from the country's founding. Arthur reached his Anglophone apotheosis in the nineteenth-century's Gothic revival, epitomized in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. At the end of her career, at the start of the Second World War, Woolf came to believe that theatrical performance offered a better paradigm for social organization than the chivalric hierarchy at the root of the patriarchal British Victorian culture in which she had grown up. She saw in the community theatre a gathering place that could foster moments of transcendent unity, intellectual freedom, and imaginative inspiration, and in drama an art form resilient enough to withstand an audience's interruption and disillusionment. Performance provided a collaborative alternative to the conservative constraints that were her Victorian legacy; history, she felt, could be more accurately portrayed through the accretion of expressive theatrical performances than by the monolithic, linear narrative it had become as the official transcript of the nation's past. The theatricals scenes of La Trobe's pageant and Cameron's Illustrations - both composed of scraps and fragments of quotidian life rearranged and recombined - offer a new visual conception of the past. Working at the level of what Walter Benjamin has called photography's optical unconscious the dissertation demonstrates how Cameron's photographs reveal a reconstellation or reconfiguration, of the dominant British narrative from defamiliarized versions of the past that resonate with La Trobe's pageant. I propose that Cameron's photos re-envision canonical texts, inspiring a new mythology for Woolf, one that reflects a fluid and elastic version of the British national story. Challenging the received Carlylean conception of history as the biographies of great men, Woolf's counter-history, like Cameron's book of illustrations, features ordinary men and women playing extraordinary roles. The legendary Arthur, traditionally credited with uniting the country's thirteen tribes, founding Britain, and shaping the nation's identity, is but one actor among many in Woolf's pageant of history; his starring role in Tennyson's Idylls of the King is reduced to a few key scenes in the Illustrations and a cameo appearance in Between the Acts. Woolf implies that though there may still be room in history's narrative for heroic men, they will no longer dominate it. With its evolving, democratic nature, the community theatre created by Anon offers a paradigm of citizenship and social organization that Woolf believed could encompass British history, re-envision it, and offer the world's citizens hope for the future.

Text in English
This study offers a fine-grained analysis of James Cameron’s film, Avatar (2009), on several theoretical fronts to provide a view of the film from a cognitive cultural studies perspective. The insights gained from cognitive theory are used to situate the debate by indicating the value cognitive theories have in cultural criticism. The critical discourse analysis of Avatar that results is a vehicle for the central concern of this study, which is to understand the diverse, often contradictory, meaning-making exhibited by Avatar audiences. A focus on the construction of empathic responses to the film’s messages investigates the success of this polysemy. Ihe central propositions of the study are that meanings and interpretations of the experience of viewing Avatar are made discursively; they are situated in definable traditions, mores and values; and this meaning-making takes place in a cognitive framework which allows for the technical reproduction and reception of the experience while providing powerful, emerging and cognitively plausible narratives. In an attempt to situate the film’s commercial success and its plethora of awards, including an Oscar for best art direction, the analysis takes a critical view of Cameron’s use of cultural stereotypes and the framing of the exotic other, and considers the continuing development of these elements over the whole series and product line or, as Henry Jenkins (2007) defines it, “transmedia”. In drawing the theoretical boundaries of the methodologies used in this study and in arguing for their complementarities, the study contributes to a renewal of Raymond Williams’ (1961) mostly forgotten claim of the cross-disciplinary cognitive dimension of cultural studies and demonstrates an affirmation of this formulation as cognitive cultural studies.
Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology
M.A. (Art History)

Margaret Cameron’s artistic practice performs as philosophy—an investigation that seeks insight through the body’s visceral capacities to perceive and to transform experience into material realities, which then become the substance of art. In order that this research project may take a congruent (or kind of equivalent) form to its proposition, this journey through Cameron’s practice is also a dramaturgical mapping. The research begins with an introduction that provides autobiographical context, proceeding to an exposition of methodology. This is followed by an excavation of an exegetical voice from personal, cultural and philosophical contexts, and arrives at a viva voce that is the performance score for a work of theatre called Opera for a small mammal. Set in the context of contemporary performance and a working life, the research traverses Cameron’s solo artistic practice from 1989 to 2012. A methodology for the overall thesis is demonstrated and enacted through strategies that serve as tools to delay closure and generate possibilities. This methodology includes the consideration of consciousness as performance. Linguistic practices are used to engage language as a perceptual instrument to hold open paradox, endure ambiguity and leverage new relationships between things. The thesis is constructed as a composition of carefully held parts, and parts of parts, that perform many perspectives of the subject in a discursive play between works. Engaging with perceptual practices and provocations from artists, theorists, philosophers, critics and colleagues, the reader is invited to participate with the artist in the perceptual encounters that conceive each work. These include the transformation of one’s self and the thinking, feeling and kinaesthetic events of live performance on a stage. This stage is underscored as a perceptual space that is active—a practising proposition that works in the body of the artist, the audience and the larger corpus of cultural reception. Perceiving many perspectives in space, poising relationships on an axis of form and content, the artist works through a synergy of modes of knowing, such as thinking, intuition, memory and feeling. These are underpinned by the proposition that art is a verb. Art invites us to audience, and it does so through unique and reciprocal acts of participation rather than spectatorship.

Stories of home do more than contribute to a culture that creates multiple ways of seeing a place: they also claim that the represented people and their shared values belong in place; that is, they claim land. Narrators of post-war B.C. resource communities create narratives that support residents’ presence although their employment, which impoverishes First Nations people and destroys ecosystems, runs counter to contemporary national constructions of Canada as a tolerant and environmentalist community. As the first two chapters show, neither narratives of nomadic early workers nor those of contemporary town residents represent values that support contemporary settler communities’ claims to be at home, as such stories associate resource work with opportunism, environmental damage, race- and gender-based oppression, and social chaos. Settler residents and the (essentially liberal) values that make them the best people for the land are represented instead through three groups of alternate stories, explored in Chapters 3-5: narratives of homesteading families extending the structure of a “good” colonial project through land development and trade; narratives of contemporary farmers who reject the legacy of the colonial project by participating in a sustainable local economy in harmony with local First Nations and the land; and narratives of direct supernatural connection to place, where the land uses the settler (often an artist or writer) as a medium to guide people to meet its (the land’s) needs. All three narratives reproduce the core idea that the best “work” makes the most secure claim to home, leading resource communities to define themselves in defiance of heir industries. Authors studied include Jack Hodgins, Anne Cameron, Susan Dobbie, Patrick Lane, Gail Anderson-Dargatz,D.W. Wilson, Harold Rhenisch, M.Wylie Blanchet, Susan Juby, and Howard White.
Graduate
2017-09-08

Trees, as threshold beings, effectively blur the line between the real world and fantastical alternate worlds, and destabilise traditional binary classification systems that distinguish humanity, and Culture, from Nature. Though the presence of trees is often peripheral to the main narrative action, their representation is necessary within the fantasy trope. Their consistent inclusion within fantasy texts of the twentieth century demonstrates an enduring arboreal legacy that cannot be disregarded in its contemporary relevance, whether they are represented individually or in collective forests. The purpose of my dissertation is to conduct a study of various prominent fantasy texts of the twentieth century, including the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Holdstock, Diana Wynne Jones, Natalie Babbitt, and J.K. Rowling. In scrutinising these texts, and drawing on insights offered by liminal, ecocritical, ecofeminist, mythological and psychological theorists, I identify the primary function of trees within fantasy narratives as liminal: what Victor Turner identifies as a ‘betwixt and between’ state (1991:95) where binaries are suspended in favour of embracing potentiality. This liminality is constituted by three central dimensions: the ecological, the mythological, and the psychological. Each dimension informs the relationship between the arboreal as grounded in reality, and represented in fantasy. Trees, as literary and cinematic arboreal totems are positioned within fantasy narratives in such a way as to emphasise an underlying call to bio-conservatorship, to enable a connection to a larger scope of cultural expectation, and to act as a means through which human self-awareness is developed.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)