ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the importance of teaching francophone Algerian women's writings through a transnational feminist lens in order to appreciate the richness and complexity of francophone Algerian literature to the full. The course is aimed at students who are bilingual in English and French, as it is part of the Letters curriculum in French and Francophone Studies. A syllabus on francophone Algerian women writers can include: orientalism and false constructions of the gendered Arab Other, debunking orientalism and colonial feminism/framing Algerian women's theoretical subjectivity, and reclaiming voice in text – francophone Algerian women writers Maïssa Bey, Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar, Malika Mokeddem, and Faïza Guène. Algerian authors are particularly sensitive to the psychological and corporeal wounds inscribed on women's bodies as a result of war, historical fractures, traumatic memory, and patriarchal ideologies, thereby demonstrating how it is impossible to disassociate gender from issues related to conquest and colonization, identity, "modernity", and historical violence.
