The Humanities Institute Presents: The Spring 2024 Faculty Scholars in Residence

Fabienne Kanor
Marian Trygve Freed Early Career Professor, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies

“When not forgotten by history, when not dissolved by the sea, when not strewn by the wind, the « revenants » return”. My experimental documentary series project Tales From the Hold poses and holds this question: What remains of the Africans swallowed up in the belly of the Atlantic Sea, and in the nothingness of the colonial plantations? How can I find their traces through time and space? How to rescue them from oblivion and bring them back to us? As I begin filming the third episode of my collection, titled, “The Last Slave Ship,” in Benin, West Africa, I take a break to present my current work and look back to the genesis of my project.