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Edwin Hill
Assistant Professor of French and Italian and Comparative Literature
Contact Information
Office: THH 155E
Phone: (213)740-3700
E-mail:
edwinhil@usc.edu
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Biographical Sketch
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My current book project builds from my dissertation, “Black Soundscapes White Stages: The Meaning of Sound in the Francophone Black Atlantic.” My work considers the torn aesthetic and ideological relationships between Antillean music and literature from the 1920s to 1960s as a colonial struggle over the meaning of Caribbean vernacular culture. My title makes reference to Martinican theorist Franz Fanon’s seminal work, Black Skin White Masks. Fanon’s work on the construction of race and gender through the dynamics of desire and language in French colonial culture forms the theoretical backbone of my work and my methodological approaches include postcolonial theory, literary criticism, musicology, and cultural studies. The project allows me to build on my undergraduate degree in music, and I hope to continue to combine my study of percussion with my research about Caribbean intellectual and literary traditions.
While my book project centers on constructions of the literary and the musical in the French West Indies, I have published and/or presented on contemporary Caribbean writers, Sub-Saharan francophone literature, African-American popular music, French chanson, and francophone hip hop. Similarly, my teaching interests, while focused on black vernacular culture and France, extend from the poetry of Negritude writers to postcolonial explorations of contemporary francophone Antillean writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Dany Laferrière, Roland Brival, and Maryse Condé. I enjoy teaching courses that combine film, music, and literature to relate histories of race to contemporary issues involving France today. I am very interested in teaching students an emergent corpus of scholarly work on French popular music as well as on the cultural politics and productions of black performance in “Jazz-Age” Paris.
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Education
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 B.A. Music Performance (Percussion), University of Iowa
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M.A. French Literature, University of Iowa
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Ph.D. French and Francophone Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2007
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Description of Research
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Summary Statement of Research Interests
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Research interests include: Francophone poetry and music. Representations of post/colonial desire and romance. Exchanges in Caribbean and black Atlantic identity formations and cultural discourses. Cultural studies, performance studies and musical discourses on gender and race. Technology and post/colonial discourse.
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Conferences and Other Presentations
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Conference Presentations
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""To Begin the Biguine"", American Comparative Literature Association, Paper, Long Beach, CA, Refereed,
Spring
2008
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"Imperial Soundscapes and the Ear of the Other", Virtual Caribbeans: Representation, Diaspora, and Performance in and on the Caribbean, Paper, New Orleans, LA, Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute, Tulane Univ, Refereed,
Spring
2008
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"Les/sons Racailles: Reframing Rap and Riots in France", "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict and Change", Paper, Seattle, Washington, Experience Music Project Music, Refereed,
Spring
2008
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Other Presentations
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"French and Francophone Popular Culture", Master's Dinner Lecture Series, Parkside International Reseidential College, Los Angeles, CA,
Spring
2008
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"Sweetest Taboo - Pop Culture and the Academy", Lecture Series: Beyond UCLA's Borders, Dept Comparative Literature, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA,
Spring
2008
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Publications
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Journal Article
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Hill, E. C.
(2007).
"‘Adieu madras, adieu foulard’: Antillean Musical Origins and the Doudou’s Colonial Plaint. Ethnomusicology Forum / Routledge.
Vol. 16 (1), pp. 19-43.
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Hill, E. C.
(2004).
'Aux armes et caetera: Re-covering Nation for Cultural Critique. Copyright Volume! Musiques actuelles et problématiques plastiques / Éditions Mélanie Séteun.
Vol. 2 (2)
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Hill, E. C.
(2002).
Imagining Métissage: The Politics and Practice of Métissage in the French Colonial Exposition and Ousmane Socé’s Mirages de Paris. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture / Routeledge.
Vol. 8 (4)
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Other
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Hill, E. C.
(2006).
"Letter following" by Daniel Maximin ("Lettre suit"). Exchanges: A Journal of Literary Translations.
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