Andrew Daily, an assistant professor of modern French and global history at the University of Memphis, will give a public lecture on the 1972 play Histoire de nègre (Black History) Jan. 27 at 11 a.m. in the auditorium of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries.
The play is a collaboratively authored, participatory drama performed by and for local audiences throughout Martinique. Originally published in the February 1972 issue of the Martinican journal ACOMA, Histoire de nègre combined music, dance, image and text into a three-act history of peoples of African descent in the New World from enslavement through neo-colonialism. The Martinican novelist and critic Edouard Glissant was a key member of both ACOMA as well as the group that wrote and produced the piece.
A specialist in French Caribbean intellectual history, Daily also will discuss his collaborative work with Emily Sahakian, an assistant professor of Romance languages and theatre and film studies in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and Christian DuComb and Mahadevi Ramakrishnan of Colgate University to translate, stage and interpret the play for American audiences and students.
While at UGA, Daily also will conduct a graduate workshop on translation. His visit is sponsored by the theatre and film studies department, the Romance languages department, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
