Associate Professor of French and African Studies
Undergraduate Coordinator, French and Francophone Studies
Ph.D., Universite de Sorbonne, Paris, France
- 484 Grinter
- sow@ufl.edu
- 352.392.2421
- Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Office Hours – Spring 2022
- By appointment
Areas of Interest
Sub-Saharan Francophone Literature
Biography
Alioune Sow is a joint appointment in French and African Studies at the University of Florida. He is the Director of the France Florida Research Institute. His research interests include democratic transition and cultural forms in francophone West Africa, focusing especially on memoirs, theater and films in Mali, as well as migration and theater practices in France. His current book project entitled Transitional memoirs, examines the interplay between letters, politics and the cultures of memory in post military Mali and in the Sahel. His articles on confessions and testimonies in democratic Mali, refugee theater in Bamako, political intuition in autobiographies of childhood, Malian cinema and military, Malian television serials and democratic experience, have been published in Critical Interventions, Social Dynamics, African Studies Review, Biography. He has also edited special issues of Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines and Etudes Littéraires Africaines. Vestiges et Vertiges appeared with Artois Presses Université in 2011. He has a PhD from the Sorbonne.
Courses
- Laughter in Africa
- Afrofuturism
- African literatures in French
- Radical literatures in France
- Hybridity and Cosmopolitanism in French and Francophone literatures
- Francophone Cultures
- French literature
- Life narratives in African literatures
Selected Publications
“Timbuktu (by Abderrahmane Sissako)—The Controversy. A Conversation among Odile Cazenave, Phyllis Taoua, Alioune Sow, Kenneth Harrow,” African Studies Review, vol. 59, no. 3 (Dec. 2016): 267-293.
(2014) with Cécile Canut, “Testimonial Theater and Migration Performance”, Africa Today, Vol 61, No2, Winter 2014, pp. 3-21.
(2014) with Cécile Canut (eds), numéro spécial Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, LIV (1-2), 213-214, Juin 2014, « La migration prise aux mots », Introduction with C. Canut « Mise en discours, mise en récit et mise en scène de la migration » and article « Nous nous appelons les voyageurs : Mise en scène des parcours migratoires dans le théâtre des réfugiés d’Afrique centrale à Bamako ».
(2014) with Catherine Mazauric (eds), special issue Etudes Littéraires Africaines “Littératures et Migrations transafricaines”, No 36, Spring 2014.
(2011) “Malian cinema and the question of military power” Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 8.
(2011) Vestiges et vertiges : Les récits d’enfance dans les littératures africaines, Artois Presses Université, May 2011.
(2010) “Nervous Confessions: Military Memoirs and National Reconciliation in Mali”, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines L (1), 197, 2010, pp. 69-93.
(2009) “Alternating views: Malian cinema, television serials and democratic experience” in Africa Today Volume 55, Number 4, Summer 2009, pp. 51-70.
(2005) “Biographies de la résistance et discours colonial: Ahmadou sultan de Ségou” in Faits religieux et résistances dans les littératures de l’ère coloniale, SIELEC, CAHIERS No 3. 2005.
(2005) “Forbidden Bodies: Relocation and Empowerment in Williams Sassine’s Novels” Matatu a Journal for African Culture and Society No 29-30, 2005, pp. 207-218.
(2004) “Tragédies élémentaires: ce que les astres ne disent pas”, Ponti / Ponts langues littératures civilisations des pays francophones 4, Fall 2004.
(2002) “The curse of the sons or the betrayal of the fathers? Rethinking the family in contemporary Malian literature”, Mande Studies 4, pp. 171-185.