Books
A meditation on translation in the most expansive meaning of the word, this book explores how “Ne me quitte pas”—a text, a piece of cultural production written in a specific context, and a work of mass/popular art—travels across languages, geographies, genres, and generations. I credit this song—and more specifically Nina Simone’s single—with one of the reasons why I, a Black woman from a monolingual English-speaking family, studied French in the first place. The book highlights the song’s winding journey from its origin by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel to Simone’s riveting cover, to Shirley Bassey’s English rendition “If You Go Away,” and to other adaptations, such as Sasha Velour’s drag performance. I analyze these different versions from various dimensions—language, sound, emotion, culture, gender, and race—to underscore the transformative power of songs.
October 2024. Reclaiming Venus: The Many Lives of Alvenia Bridges. Rising Action Press.
Growing up in the 1950s in segregated Kansas, Alvenia Bridges dreamed of leaving home and seeing the world. Despite her destructive home life and the racially oppressive environment of her childhood, Alvenia graduated high school, left for L.A., and successfully navigated the predominantly white and male-run worlds of fashion and 70s and 80s Rock and Roll. From a chance encounter with race car driver John Von Neumann that jump-started her modeling career in Europe to her years working for famous musicians, Alvenia’s unflappable resolve left her impressively mobile in the face of societal constraints. Alvenia had much to share with the world as she crossed paths and worked with a wide variety of people in the music and fashion industries, from long-term working relationships with Bill Graham, Roberta Flack, and the Rolling Stones, to momentary yet extraordinary encounters with Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Prince, and Tina Turner, to personal and professional interactions with Jerry Hall, Antonio Lopez, and Francesco Scavullo. Alvenia’s remarkable life forged a path through glass ceilings and blocked doors that reads like a work of fiction. See also the digital humanities project associated with the book.
This volume explores the fascinating role of language in national, transnational, postcolonial, racial, and migrant identities. Drawing on extensive interviews with people of Senegalese heritage, Maya Angela Smith contends that they are notable in their capacity for movement and in their multifaceted approach to speech, shaping their identity as they purposefully switch between languages and structure. Offering a mix of poignant, funny, reflexive, introspective, and witty stories, Senegal Abroad blurs the lines between the utility and pleasure of language, allowing a more nuanced understanding of why and how Senegalese move. This book was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies. The French translation Sénégalais de l’Étranger was published in 2023 with TBR Books.
Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters
*Please reach out to me if you would like a pdf of any of the articles below*
Throughout the world, French stands alongside a variety of other languages, often existing uneasily within complex multilingual societies. Scholars approach these language contact situations in various ways. Some look at language contact at the societal level to analyse phenomena such as language shift or the creation of new languages. Others focus more on the individual level to investigate how speakers use multiple languages in their linguistic repertoire such as through borrowing, code-switching, or translanguaging. Through a historical and present-day perspective, this chapter explores typologies of contact situations and their outcomes as well as typologies of multilingual practices before delving into two case studies of multilingualism in the Francophone world.
This chapter reflects on the author’s journey to explore language and Blackness in the traditionally anti-Black disciplines of linguistics and French studies. Her research interests and intellectual trajectory emerged from her personal experiences with language acquisition and racialization, the challenges she has encountered from a lack of resources on how to analyze racial identity formation in linguistics, and the strategies she has devised to confront these challenges. Through her research centering on qualitative interviews of members of the Francophone African diaspora, the author has learned how participants’ reflections on real-world language acquisition can counter the ongoing impacts of colonial linguistic hegemony and can help dismantle white supremacy, which relies on language ideologies to commodify, erase, and invalidate the linguistic experiences of members of the global majority. This chapter thus argues for expanding knowledge production, engaging in reflexivity, centering the voices that are least heard, and championing multilingual practices as methods for decolonizing linguistics and language study.
When students take courses in Italian Studies, they expect to learn about the cultural and linguistic contributions of white Europeans. Language learning textbooks and the literary canon reinforce this image. However, both historically and in present-day, understandings of race in Italy and the Italian diaspora are much more complex and context dependent. With the recent increase in migration to Italy, the nature of Italian identity and who can claim Italianità have become highly contested in the public sphere. One way for students to think critically about Italian studies is by learning about the lived experiences of its marginalized and minoritized inhabitants. In an important step towards decolonizing the curriculum, some instructors have begun including literary works of Italian authors of color such as Pap Khouma and Igiaba Scego. However, various approaches beyond literary studies can showcase diverse perspectives. Based on sociolinguistic, ethnographic research analyzed in Senegal Abroad (2019), this chapter looks at how Senegalese migrants in Rome conceptualize their place in Italian society through their reflections on language learning and cultural belonging. By engaging with this type of interview data, students in Italian studies can take part in a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive classroom experience.
Even though the use of regional varieties is steadily declining in Italy, they are still present in linguistic repertoires, and attitudes about them are still central to how many Italians think about themselves. This is the complicated context that migrants encounter when they arrive in Italy. Through an ethnographic, sociolinguistic case study conducted during a three-month period in 2010, this chapter sheds light on how Senegalese migrants in Rome navigate the societal language ideologies of their new home (e.g., Italian societal discourses about standard language and nonstandard varieties) and the language attitudes they bring with them (e.g., complex ideas about language developed through socialization, schooling, and national discourses in Senegal and other countries). Through reflections on their experiences with standard Italian, informal registers of Italian, Romanesco, and other Italo–Romance dialects, the nine people represented in this chapter demonstrate the ways in which they not only use and discuss language, but also how they position themselves linguistically in their new society.
This chapter builds on a body of research in SLA that conceives gender as a dynamic, context-dependent social construction that has bearing on identity formation and language learning. Based on interviews with six Senegalese women artists living in Rome as part of a larger sociolinguistic, qualitative study on the Senegalese community there, this chapter focuses on different factors that contribute to these women’s acquisition and use of Italian, their investment in language learning identities, and their navigation of various communities of practice. In particular, the research explores how, on the one hand, transnational gender roles and expectations as well as the intersection of racial, gender, and linguistic identity formation in Italian society serve to silence some women as they struggle to access Italian language spaces and invest in Italian-speaking identities. On the other hand, agentive strategies that many of the women employ as they navigate hostile linguistic terrains demonstrate how they are still able to learn Italian, invest in Italian and multilingual identities, and claim the right to speak. As such, this article explores the sociolinguistic reflections of these women as they share their experiences of being simultaneously Black, Senegalese, women, migrants, artists, language learners, and transnational multilingual travelers.
This chapter argues that while higher education in the United States is becoming more diverse, the French foreign language curriculum continues to present a very narrow and specific model of a French speaker. As a result, there often is a disconnect between students’ identities and the ideal they hope to achieve, which leads to linguistic insecurity and anxiety. Drawing on literature in Second Language Acquisition, the authors articulate pedagogical strategies to help students better understand the role of language ideologies and identity formation in their language learning. The authors then incorporate real-world examples of multilingual usage in the French language context to invite students to center their experiences as multilingual speakers and creative language users instead of simply as imitators of monolingual French native speakers.
The article demonstrates how assumptions concerning the French language and its ideal speakers reinforce social inequities and impede language learning. It provides real-world examples of how instructors can create opportunities for students to reflect on their attitudes toward language learning. It goes on to explore strategies to make the French-language classroom more inclusive which include centering on multilingualism and introducing students to debates about gender-inclusivity.
Realizing that most young people in Senegal are not reading or watching the news but are listening to rap, Xuman and Keyti created Journal Rappé (JR) as a form of “edutainment”—a balance between education and entertainment. Rapping the news in both French and Wolof, the JR represents a critical space to continue a hip-hop legacy of civic engagement, using humor to offer different perspectives on how to address issues such as political corruption, poverty, and unemployment. Drawing on the fields of sociolinguistics and Africa diaspora studies to analyze their bilingual news program, this chapter explores how Xuman and Keyti utilize music to relay important information to a traditionally underserved market, the significance of multilingualism in conveying their message, and their interest in challenging the dominant narrative of Africa as synonymous with misery.
In attempts to conceptualize identity formation in the French Caribbean, authors and literary scholars have championed different movements such as Negritude, Creoleness, and Creolization. However, these theorizations are not just within the purview of elite academic discourse or producers of literary works because ‘every people’ debate and reflect on these issues as well. In exploring the complexities of being a citizen of a French overseas department where Martinicans must confront French assimilationist practices that imagine France as a white, European, French-speaking nation above all else, this sociolinguistic, qualitative study advances discussions concerning language, citizenship, and inclusion in light of continued dissatisfaction with the racial politics associated with language practice both on the island and the mainland. In doing so, it provides a new understanding of how racial hierarchies are reproduced and/or contested in everyday language as well as in postcolonial theory and literature.
Since 2005, the French Heritage Language Program has sought to address the needs of underserved French-speaking communities throughout the United States. With the goal of “making French an asset for new Americans,” the majority of whom come from West Africa and Haiti, the FHLP not only provides free French language training, it also creates a space where these students can construct their identities as multilingual speakers and learn the value of their various cultural backgrounds. By analyzing data gathered from students, teachers, and staff in the New York City branch of the FHLP program, including sociolinguistic interviews, classroom observations, and surveys, this article explores identity formation with regard to not only French but to all languages in a person’s linguistic repertoire. To contextualize the participants’ experiences, a first line of inquiry examines the FHLP in relation to monolingual ideologies and policies often inherent in French language education. How does the program address French as a heritage language that may be only one of many heritage languages a student possesses and that may only have a minimal presence as a home language? A second line of inquiry then focuses on individual participants’ language ideologies. Given that many students come from former French colonies, what are their reasons for learning French? What are their attitudes toward French and other languages? What is their relationship with their countries of origin, with France, or with the greater Francophone world? Through these questions, this article charts multilingual identity formation, cultural exploration, and creative expression.
Just as the distinction between ‘French’ and ‘Francophone’ has implications in French literary studies, the boundaries that position certain groups as outsiders also exist in French society at large, where just because one speaks French, one is not necessarily a legitimate French speaker. For instance, while linguistic legislation in France stipulates that one must demonstrate a certain level of language proficiency in order to be granted citizenship as a means of fostering social integration, experiences of discrimination and exclusion evoked in interviews with 24 Senegalese immigrants and French citizens of Senegalese origin call into question the link between proficiency and acceptance. Through an applied linguistics perspective, this article demonstrates that linguistic competence is often determined by more than just the ability to use a language; it depends on the ability to prove cultural legitimacy, which is directly tied to understandings of race, nationality and language ownership.
While African immigrants and Italians of African descent have become more visible in Italian society since the 1980s, Italian culture and identity are still largely understood by majority white Italians in terms of race, nationhood, and family history. Overwhelmingly absent from these national discussions concerning the inclusion of immigrants, foreign residents, and so-called non-Italian citizens in society are the very people at the center of these debates. To give voice to some of these individuals, this article explores how a specific group, the Senegalese community in Rome, conceptualizes and understands identity formation as foreigners and as linguistic, racial and ethnic minorities through the lens of Applied Linguistics. Through analysis of code-switching in qualitative ethnographic data collected in the spring of 2010, I show how multilingual practices illustrate these immigrants’ understandings of inclusion/exclusion and how these notions intersect with ideas about blackness. Therefore, this essay calls into question the static, exclusionary narrative on national identity and shows the ways in which the Senegalese community in Rome inserts formulations of blackness in the conversation. By comprehending how immigrants perceive their identities and the sites in which these identities are constructed, we gain a more multifaceted perspective on what it means to be Italian.
SLA research on foreign language pedagogy has long demonstrated that culture is essential to language learning. However, presenting culture in the language classroom poses certain problems. For learners, there is a tendency to stereotype others and to rely excessively on the teacher. For teachers, there is a tendency to transmit isolated facts without elaboration and to associate a target language with a single monolithic culture. This article presents a pedagogical approach to culture that not only exposes students to networks of authentic texts but also motivates them to research for themselves the many subtleties of the target culture. By learning how to approach a network of texts, students gain deeper insight into the target culture and develop their ability to interpret texts that they will subsequently encounter on their own. This approach will be illustrated by a detailed lesson plan as well as an analysis of the responses of students who engaged with these materials in an advanced intermediate level French class.
Public Scholarship
2023. “Ways of Knowing: ‘Ne me quitte pas.’” The World According to Sound.
2023. “Navigating Academia and the Influence of Language.” Identity Unboxed.
2023. “Shiver Me Timbers: A Show about Sea Chanteys.” The Colin McEnroe Show.
2022. “Langues et identité avec Maya Smith.” French Morning US.
2021. “Enunciating Power: Amanda Gorman and My Battle to Claim My Voice.” Yes! Magazine.
2020. “Black Motherhood amidst Two Pandemics: A Lament for My Unborn Son.” Medium.
2020. “As a Black Mother-to-be, I’m already Full of Heartache.” Boston Globe.
2018. “How Black Panther is Rewriting Hollywood’s Narrative of Blackness.” Nerdist.