Valerie K Orlando
Biographic Data
| ID | 83579 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valerie K Orlando |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valerie K |
| FAMILY NAME | Orlando |
| SIGNATURE | ORLANDO V K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Maryland, College Park |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1859-9723 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
African Literature in Transition: The Archive of African Literature, 1800–2000
This book offers a compelling new approach to African literatures as formed by and itself a form of collective memory. It explores the historical spaces and maps that African literature brings to the surface and re-imagines in novel ways. The stories that matter about what happened in the past together constitute a collective memory that African writers and readers draw upon to locate themselves within the world. The book examines the mental maps…
Algiers as a “Realm” of Memory in Contemporary Algerian Postcolonial Literature of French Expression
This chapter considers how colonialism (and its legacy in the postcolonial period) has influenced the articulation of the geographical space of Algiers as a lieu de mémoire in works of fiction written by contemporary Algerian authors of French expression. “Under what historical conditions is a city, and a postcolonial city at that, transformed into a ‘site of memory’?” asks scholar Réda Bensmaïa referring to Algiers. Is Pierre Nora’s les lieux de…
Transgressing the Real and the Fictional in Fatima Mernissi's Autofiction. Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (1994) by Fatima Mernissi blends childhood memories (1944–1949) with Morocco's nationalist movement and path to independence. The narrative intertwines personal anecdotes with historical shifts, illustrating women's gradual emancipation from patriarchal traditions like seclusion and veiling. This essay examines Mernissi's work as autofiction , where the author-feminist merges reality and fiction to de…
Introduction: Fatema Mernissi en 2025 : Féministe, chercheuse, activiste politique. Célébration d'une vie (1940-2015)
Susan Slyomovics , Monuments Decolonized: Algeria's French Colonial Heritage
Sara Nacer, dir. La Rockeuse du désert (The Desert Rocker). 2022. 75 minutes. Arabic and French, with English subtitles. Canada. L’Equipage. No Price Reported. Available to stream on Eventive
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Khalid Zairi, dir. Mora est là: Une obligation de mémoire (Mora Is Here: An Obligation to Remember). 2023. 87 minutes. Arabic, Tamazight, French, with English subtitles. ZK Productions. No price repor…
Au carrefour de l’avenir in La Littérature-Monde: Mbougar M. Sarr’s, La Plus secrète mémoire des hommes
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021), Prix Goncourt de Mbougar M. Sarr, est le fruit d’échanges mondiaux, de liens historiques et d’un engagement avec de multiples genres littéraires. L’œuvre reflète la réalité des auteurs contemporains écrivant en français en dehors de l’Hexagone. Comme le note l’auteure Simone Schwarz-Bart, ces auteurs sont ce qu’ils sont en raison du « fruit de la rencontre des mondes, géographiquement et historiquement. …
Women Filmmakers, War, Violence and Healing on the Algerian Screen: Mounia Meddour's Papicha (2019)
Papicha (2019) by Mounia Meddour announces a new generation of Algerian women filmmakers known for their activism and feminism inspired by the #MeToo movement and, in the case of Papicha, reflect the current social movements for change in Algeria such as the Hirak movement begun in 2019 the same year the film was produced
Stories of Algerian fathers still “refereeing the game” post- La décennie noire: Terminal Sud (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, 2019)
Since the end of the Algerian revolution for independence (1954–1962), filmmakers and authors have struggled to articulate what the postcolonial nation would be and become, even though many quickly became disillusioned by it. By 1965, the FLN had established the doxa of the new nation of Algeria. However, the foundational narrative of this doxa became increasingly repressive and coercive, relying on what historian Benjamin Stora calls une histoir…
New African Cinema
New African Cinema examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers from the early post-colonial years into the new millennium. Offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema since the 1960s, Valérie K. Orlando highlights the variations in content and themes that reflect the socio-cultural and political environments of filmmakers and the cultures they depict in their fi…
L'exilé, l'étranger et l'autre dans les œuvres de Nabile Farès
L'exilé, l'étranger et l'autre dans les œuvres de Nabile Farès Fazia Aïtel (bio) and Valérie K. Orlando (bio) Le 30 août 2016, Nabile Farès tirait sa révérence. Avec sa disparition, ce n'est pas seulement l'écrivain qui nous quitte mais aussi le philosophe, l'anthropologue, le conteur, le sociologue, le psychanalyste, le poète, le professeur et enfin l'homme, l'homme libre, l'Amazigh. Car dès ses premiers romans, Farès a fait montre d'une liberté…
L'Altérité, l'algérianité et le devenir en errance: James Baldwin et Nabile Farès à la recherche d'« un nouveau monde »
Cet essai propose d'examiner l'influence de James Baldwin sur les romans de Nabile Farès, surtout ceux qui ont été publiés au début des années 1970 comme Un passager de l'Occident (1971) et Le Champs des oliviers. Découverte du monde (1972). Il s'agira plus précisément de mettre en lumière l'inspiration que trouva Farès, alors vivant en exil, dans les œuvres de Baldwin pour développer ses propres idées sur l'identité, l'altérité, l'aliénation et …
Tarik El Idrissi, Rif 1958-59: Briser le silence (Rif 1958-59, Break the silence). 2015. Morocco. Moroccan Arabic with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. 1 hour 16 min. Distributed by Sofia Aghil…
Tarik El Idrissi, Rif 1958-59: Briser le silence (Rif 1958-59, Break the silence). 2015. Morocco. Moroccan Arabic with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. 1 hour 16 min. Distributed by Sofia Aghilas. No price reported. Available on YouTube. - Volume 61 Issue 1
Challenging the Algerian master narrative in Samir Toumi'sL'Effacement(2016): A Counter-Narrative for a Mujahidin Haunting
L’Effacement (2016), contemporary Algerian author Samir Toumi’s second novel, is a first-person narrative by an unnamed 44-year old man. To the protagonist’s horror his reflection in the mirror is slowly disappearing despite psychiatric treatments prescribed by ‘Doctor B’ who explains that the protagonist’s malady is ‘le syndrome de l’effacement ... ’ (the erasure syndrome). This syndrome seems to affect only men born after Algeria’s 1962 indepen…
The transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone literature across the Mediterranean
Edwige Talbayev offers an exemplary study on literatures of the Maghreb. The book comprises an introduction, four chapters and an epilogue. Chapters cover various aspects of the literary configurat
Being-in-the-world: The Afropolitan Moroccan author’s worldview in the new millennium
In the last decade, many contemporary African authors of French expression from both North and sub-Saharan Africa have posited perspectives in their novels that reveal a global cosmopolitanism that uniquely defines African literature in the twenty-first century. Moroccan authors writing in French such as Youssouf Amine Elalamy and Fouad Laroui, among others, promote a way of being African in the world that disassociates the author from the litera…
The Algerian New Novel: The Poetics of a Modern Nation, 1950-1979
Film Review and Interview
Contemporary cinema of Africa and the diaspora
“Crier dans le désert”: Abdellatif Laâbi’s Epistolary Reflections on the Role of the Moroccan Intellectual in Un autre Maroc
Abdellatif Laâbi’s epistolary work, Un autre Maroc (2013), entreats readers to think about a plethora of questions associated with Morocco’s sociocultural and political milieus which have developed since the death of King Hassan II in 1999, marking the finale to the dark years of his reign known as Les années de plomb (The Lead Years). The most important issues Laâbi covers in his open letter to the people of Morocco center on what future the cou…
The Transnational Turn in African Literature of French Expression: Imagining Other Utopic Spaces in the Globalized Age
This article focuses on African literature published since 2000 by authors of French expression. While contemporary authors’ subjects are varied—ranging from climate change, human rights, to ethnic cleansing—they also imagine new “what ifs” and other utopic spaces and places that extend beyond postcolonial, Africa-as-victim paradigms. Literarily, authors such as Abdelaziz Belkhodja (Tunisia) and Abdourahman A. Waberi (Djibouti) have effectuated a…
Manthia Diawara, director. Edouard Glissant: One World in Relation. 2010. 50 minutes. Third World Newsreel. French with English subtitles. No price reported. www.twn.org/catalog/pages/cpage.aspx?rec=1…
Manthia Diawara, director. Edouard Glissant: One World in Relation. 2010. 50 minutes. Third World Newsreel. French with English subtitles. No price reported. www.twn.org/catalog/pages/cpage.aspx?rec=1299. - Volume 59 Issue 1
Women, madness, myth and film: Exploring Moroccan psychological trauma and postmemory inPegase(Mohamed Mouftakir, 2010)
Moroccan cinema serves as a cultural barometer measuring the sociocultural and political transformations that are taking place in the country. Certainly since 1999, the death of King Hassan II, and the ascension of his son, King Mohamed VI, the country has sought to map its future as a leader of reform in the Arab world. This article considers how memories and unrevealed stories of this oppressive era have been scrutinised in psychologically prob…
Conversations with Camus as foil, foe and fantasy in contemporary writing by Algerian authors of French expression
Albert Camus's conflicted legacy in Algeria not only reveals his vague place in the annuals of Algerian history, but also offers authors a means to segue into other moral, humanist and postcolonial questions confronting Algeria's post-années noires (the Dark Years, also known as the Black Decade), the rarely discussed and psychologically troubling 1990s civil war period. Challenging how history has been documented in Algeria since 1962, contempor…
Francophone Voices of the "New" Morocco in Film and Print: Presenting a Society in Transition
This study of Moroccan society explores the country's culture through its literature, journalism and film. It examines transitions from traditionalism to modernity within the conflicted polemics of th
From Rap to Raï in the Mixing Bowl: Beur Hip‐Hop Culture and Banlieue Cinema in Urban France
Being-in-the-world: The Afropolitan Moroccan author's worldview in the new millennium
In the last decade, many contemporary African authors of French expression from both North and sub-Saharan Africa have posited perspectives in their novels that reveal a global cosmopolitanism that uniquely defines African literature in the twenty-first century. Moroccan authors writing in French such as Youssouf Amine Elalamy and Fouad Laroui, among others, promote a way of being African in the world that disassociates the author from the litera…
Challenging the Algerian master narrative in Samir Toumi'sL'Effacement(2016): A Counter-Narrative for a Mujahidin Haunting
L’Effacement (2016), contemporary Algerian author Samir Toumi’s second novel, is a first-person narrative by an unnamed 44-year old man. To the protagonist’s horror his reflection in the mirror is slowly disappearing despite psychiatric treatments prescribed by ‘Doctor B’ who explains that the protagonist’s malady is ‘le syndrome de l’effacement ... ’ (the erasure syndrome). This syndrome seems to affect only men born after Algeria’s 1962 indepen…
The transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone literature across the Mediterranean
Edwige Talbayev offers an exemplary study on literatures of the Maghreb. The book comprises an introduction, four chapters and an epilogue. Chapters cover various aspects of the literary configurat
Feminine spaces and places in the dark recesses of Morocco's past: The prison testimonials in poetry and prose of Saïda Menebhi and Fatna El Bouih
Since the late 1990s and the end of the era known as 'les années de plomb' (the Lead Years), Moroccan women have spoken out in French and Arabic on a variety of issues including past socio-political and human rights abuses in Morocco. From the prison accounts authored by several former women detainees during the Lead Years to the documented revelations about Morocco's street children and 'petites bonnes' (girl maids often held as prisoners in the…
The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco
Book Review| August 01 2006 The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco Susan Slyomovics Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005 271 pp., $55.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper) Valérie Orlando Valérie Orlando Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2006) 26 (2): 328–329. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2006-012 Cite Ic…
The Afrocentric Paradigm and Womanist Agendas in Ousmane Sembene's Faat Kine (2001)
Research Article| August 01 2006 The Afrocentric Paradigm and Womanist Agendas in Ousmane Sembène's Faat Kiné (2001) Valérie Orlando Valérie Orlando Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2006) 26 (2): 213–224. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2006-005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Valérie Orlando; The Afrocentric Paradigm…
To Be Singularly Nomadic or a Territorialized National: At the Crossroads of Francophone Women's Writing of the Maghreb
The terms postcoloniality, alterity, nomadism, and deterritorializing, as Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak have brilliantly shown us, are familiarly used to represent the non-Western, nonwhite European, Othered novel of our era. The increasingly fluid theories and concepts that form studies have generated several debates (certainly in the past ten to fifteen years) in which the term postcolonial has morphed into new meanings. The result of the d…
From Rap to Raï in the Mixing Bowl: Beur Hip‐Hop Culture and Banlieue Cinema in Urban France
The Truncated memories and fragmented pasts of contemporary Algeria: Salim Bachi’s Le Chien d’Ulysse
Algerian Salim Bachi’s Le Chien d’Ulysse (2001) reveals a world that is caught in the overlapping of truth and myth, hampering the construction of what Pierre Nora describes as the lieux de mémoire necessary for the health of a society’s collective memory. Principal protagonists, Hocine and his friends, are victims of a chaotic parable alluding to the sociocultural disarray which has reigned in Algeria in recent years. Their attempts to construct…
African feminine transformative consciousness in francophone cinema: Moussa Sene Absa'sTableau Ferraille(1996)
Filmmaker Moussa Sene Absa's 1996 film Tableau Ferraille (‘Scrap Heap’) astutely examines the contemporary conundrums of issues faced by women in present day Senegal. The title leads to many literal and metaphorical allusions that become more apparent as the film progresses. Absa's work refutes contemporary western stereotypes about African women to expose a feminist transformative agenda that posits female subjecthood as an original conceptualiz…
The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco
Book Review| August 01 2006 The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco Susan Slyomovics Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005 271 pp., $55.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper) Valérie Orlando Valérie Orlando Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2006) 26 (2): 328–329. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2006-012 Cite Ic…
The Afrocentric Paradigm and Womanist Agendas in Ousmane Sembene's Faat Kine (2001)
Research Article| August 01 2006 The Afrocentric Paradigm and Womanist Agendas in Ousmane Sembène's Faat Kiné (2001) Valérie Orlando Valérie Orlando Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2006) 26 (2): 213–224. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2006-005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Valérie Orlando; The Afrocentric Paradigm…
To Be Singularly Nomadic or a Territorialized National: At the Crossroads of Francophone Women's Writing of the Maghreb
The terms postcoloniality, alterity, nomadism, and deterritorializing, as Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak have brilliantly shown us, are familiarly used to represent the non-Western, nonwhite European, Othered novel of our era. The increasingly fluid theories and concepts that form studies have generated several debates (certainly in the past ten to fifteen years) in which the term postcolonial has morphed into new meanings. The result of the d…
Voices of African Filmmakers: Contemporary Issues in Francophone West African Filmmaking
African films mandate that we not only consider individual films for their aesthetic merits, but also the larger, global challenges and triumphs of the African film industry. The early 1960s dates
The Texts of Human Rights: Moroccan Prison Testimonials by Victims of the Lead Years
Since the end of Morocco’s Lead Years, la mémoire refoulée (suppressed memory) of this dark period has been the theme of many francophone authors’ works. Novels and testimonials published since the late 1990s seek to reveal a hidden past. The principal themes of these works reflect the more open sociocultural and political climate that has fostered the study of violations of human rights during Morocco’s postcolonial history.
Introduction Enunciating the Unsaid and the Historically “Inconceivable” in the Words of Contemporary Francophone Morocco
“Is there a future for Morocco?” is a resounding question inherent in the contemporary literature of the post—Lead Years. The future of the country is also bound up in questions of identity, for a country and a people, as it tries to resolve the historic silences of its past. Those who were oppressed or effaced are now weighing in on the reconstruction of a past that has never been told. In his novel Amours sorcières (Enchanted Loves, 2003), reno…
Conclusion
Contemporary literature, film, and the press have been instrumental in aiding Moroccans to study socially, culturally, and politically the abuses of the past in order to transition toward a positive future. Authors, filmmakers, and journalists seek to expose the skeletons that lurk in the closets of the past. The documenting of life stories in their works has become essential in the country’s national project to contextualize the Lead Years in or…
Publishing Women: The Feminine Voices of Social Activists
Like their male counterparts, contemporary Moroccan women authors writing in French are sociopolitical activists influencing today’s Moroccan society. Their works—whether fiction, autobiography, or testimonial—offer a window through which to assess the transitions taking place now with respect to the roles and place of women. These authors’ original writing expresses women’s unique experiences in today’s New Morocco. Since 1999, with their pens, …
The Humanist Individual in Contemporary Morocco
Moroccan humanist authors reveal perspectives in their novels that are globally interconnected, linking continents, philosophies, and views irrespective of religion, ethnicity, or political dogmas. Authors Faoud Laroui (Méfiez-vous des parachutistes, 1999), Youssouf Elalamy (Les Clandestins, 2001), Mahi Binebine (Cannibales, 2001), Mohamed Nedali (Morceaux de choix, 2003), and Souad Bahéchar (Le Concert des cloches, 2005) write as existentialist …
TelQuel: Morocco as It Is in the Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers of the Francophone Press
Since 1999, Moroccan journalists of French expression have contributed to a discursive public space that reflects a communicative pact between themselves and readers. This space has developed on the peripheries of the status quo and obliges the reader and journalist to invest mutually in socially, culturally, and politically changing the contours of their society. The bond between readers and journalists dedicated to changing their country contri…
Sexuality, Gender, and the Homoerotic Novel of the New Morocco
The emancipation of diverse voices in Morocco is not limited to those of women. In recent years, voices once absent from public discourse have begun to be heard. Sociocultural and religions traditions and taboos regarding sexuality are challenged by the authors presented in this chapter. They engage in a discourse that reflects what Abdelkébir Khatibi designates as a pensée-autre , an-other way of thinking about otherness and marginality. These k…
The Power of Engagement: Writing in/on the Front Lines of Politics and Culture in the New Morocco
In 1961, Frantz Fanon proclaimed in Les Damnés de la terre that it was the responsibility of the author to cultivate “un style heurté” (an assertive style) that would “étonner” (stun) the West (notably European colonizers) into recognizing that the colonized writer had entered a “phase de la conscience” (consciousness phase) that had been liberated from oppression (210). Fanon encouraged the author to do his duty to inform and incite the masses t…
Morocco on the Screen: Cinema in the New Morocco
Since 1999, contemporary cinematography, similar to literature, has engaged some of the most pressing subjects of the day in Morocco. Films made in recent years such as Tabite or not Tabite (2006), Marock (2005), J’ai vu tuer Ben Barka (I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed, 2005), Le Grand Voyage (The Long Voyage, 2004), and Les Yeux Secs (Dry Eyes, 2002) have exposed once taboo subjects on the screen. Themes have ranged from political corruption, police b…
Francophone Voices of the "New" Morocco in Film and Print: Presenting a Society in Transition
This study of Moroccan society explores the country's culture through its literature, journalism and film. It examines transitions from traditionalism to modernity within the conflicted polemics of th
Feminine spaces and places in the dark recesses of Morocco's past: The prison testimonials in poetry and prose of Saïda Menebhi and Fatna El Bouih
Since the late 1990s and the end of the era known as 'les années de plomb' (the Lead Years), Moroccan women have spoken out in French and Arabic on a variety of issues including past socio-political and human rights abuses in Morocco. From the prison accounts authored by several former women detainees during the Lead Years to the documented revelations about Morocco's street children and 'petites bonnes' (girl maids often held as prisoners in the…
Yousry Nasrallah. Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story. Original title: Ehky Ya Schahrazad. 2009. Egypt. Arabic, with English subtitles. 132 min. ArtMattan Production. $295.00
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Pierre-Yves Borgeaud. Youssou N'Dour: Return to Gorée. 2006. Senegal, United States, Europe. French and English. 108 min. ArtMattan Productions. $245.00
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Mohamed Moutakfkir. Pegasus (Al-Burāq). 2010. Morocco. Moroccan Arabic, with English subtitles. 104 min. Dreamaker Productions/Global Film Initiative. No price reported. See http: Catalogue.globalfilm…
Mohamed Moutakfkir. Pegasus (Al-Burāq). 2010. Morocco. Moroccan Arabic, with English subtitles. 104 min. Dreamaker Productions/Global Film Initiative. No price reported. See http://catalogue.globalfilm.org. - Volume 56 Issue 2
Being-in-the-world: The Afropolitan Moroccan author's worldview in the new millennium
In the last decade, many contemporary African authors of French expression from both North and sub-Saharan Africa have posited perspectives in their novels that reveal a global cosmopolitanism that uniquely defines African literature in the twenty-first century. Moroccan authors writing in French such as Youssouf Amine Elalamy and Fouad Laroui, among others, promote a way of being African in the world that disassociates the author from the litera…
Abdellah Taïa, director. L’Armée du Salut (Salvation Army). 2013. 81 minutes. French and Moroccan Arabic (English subtitles). France/Morocco. Les film Pelléas, Rita Production, Ali n’Films. No price r…
Abdellah Taïa, director. L’Armée du Salut (Salvation Army). 2013. 81 minutes. French and Moroccan Arabic (English subtitles). France/Morocco. Les film Pelléas, Rita Production, Ali n’Films. No price reported. - Volume 57 Issue 2
Manthia Diawara, director. Maison Tropicale. 2008. Republic of Congo/France. French, Portuguese, Wolof with English subtitles. 58 minutes. Third World Newsreel. No price reported
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Being-in-the-World in the Global Age: Marginal Spaces as Alternative Places in the Belgian-Moroccan Transnational Cityscape of Les Barons
Europe's immigrant populations are often represented on screen by both European and immigrant filmmakers as marginalized in the violent neighborhoods of peripheral urban areas in Paris, Lyon, London, and elsewhere. The film Les Barons (Nabil Ben Yadir, 2009) seeks to counter such stereotypes. The protagonists of Les Barons are multilingual, multicultural young men with proud ties to their families and the ability, at the same time, to straddle cu…
Art (38 works) · African history and culture studies (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · History (23 works) · Political science (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Humanities (18 works) · North African History and Literature (16 works) · Literature (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works)