Great Falls Forum with Emmanuel Kayembe
The 2019-2020 season of the Great Falls Forum continues on Thursday, March 19th, featuring Dr. Emmanuel Kayembe, Fellow for Franco-American Studies at the University of Southern Maine, with a talk entitled “Francophonie, Immigration, Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Identities in the USA.” The program will take place from 12 noon to 1 PM in Callahan Hall at the Lewiston Public Library.
Using French and Francophone migrations’ history in the USA as a pretext, Dr. Kayembe will discuss the need to rethink what it means to belong to a community, a territory, or a country, because no one can be called an absolute autochthone. In his Great Falls Forum talk, he will discuss the modern state of “cultural between,” not belonging to a specific race or people.
Dr. Emmanuel Kayembe received his Ph.D. in French Language and Literature from the University of Capetown in 2011. He is a former Research Fellow at the American Council of Learned Societies, and served as a Senior Lecturer and a Teaching Assistant respectively at the University of Lubumbashi and at the University of Cape Town, before joining the University of Botswana, where he taught French Language, Literature and Culture from 2013 to 2017. He is currently working as a Fellow for Franco-American Studies and an Instructor of French at the University of Southern Maine. Apart from having extensively published on Francophone literatures and cultures, he has a research interest in fundamental questions about the Francophonie in the world. He is a member of the Centre de la Francophonie des Amériques (Québec) and a Board member of the Alliance Française de Portland (Maine).
The Great Falls Forum is a monthly, brown-bag speaker series featuring statewide and regional leaders in public policy, business, academia and the arts. The programs are free, open to all and no reservations are required. Coffee, tea and bottled water are provided for a donation at the event. The Forum is a co-sponsorship of the Sun Journal, Bates College, and LPL.