Jennifer Bajorek
Dr. Jennifer Bajorek
Hampshire College, USA / University of Johannesburg, South Africa (june 2022)
postdoc project : The Image of Immigration in Contemporary France
Vita
Jennifer Bajorek is a scholar and curator working at the intersection of literature, art, and media, with a linguistic and cultural focus on French and Francophone worlds and a geographic focus on contemporary Africa. She has published and taught widely on French and Francophone (Caribbean and African) literature and film, on Marxist and postcolonial theory, on the history of photography in Africa, and on contemporary art and emerging media practice by artists in Africa and the global diaspora. Her work also includes translation, curating and public programming, and diverse forms of collaboration.
Research focus
The Image of Immigration in Contemporary France
In her current research Jennifer Bajorek examines representations of immigration in contemporary France. At a moment when immigration, migration, and mobility have come increasingly to dominate political discourse in Europe, the image of the (im)migrant is in transformation. Jennifer Bajore’s research traces some of these transformations through contemporary art practice and media images, paying close attention to new aesthetic strategies being developed by artists, activists, and new immigrants/migrants themselves. The project has historical as well as theoretical dimensions. Historically, it seeks to excavate longer histories of representation in the context of histories of nationalism, Republicanism, and colonialism. Theoretically, the aim is to elucidate challenges to postcolonial idea(l)s of multiculturalism in the wake of contemporary phenomena (neo-liberalism, challenges to French universalism, the so-called “migration crisis”).
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