Aliko Songolo

Aliko Songolo is Visiting Professor of French & Francophone Literatures. He is Professor Emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has also taught at the University of California, Irvine. His research and teaching interests are in Francophone literatures of Africa, the Caribbean and France, and in Francophone cinemas of Africa.

He published a monograph, Aimé Césaire: une poétique de la découverte (1985), two co-edited volumes, Twenty-five Years After Dakar and Fourah Bay: The Growth of African Literature (1998) and Atlantic Cross-Currents/Transatlantiques (2001), and was Associate Editor of the highly acclaimed five-volume New Encyclopedia of Africa (2008). He also edited or co-edited special issues of French Review and Présence Francophone and published numerous articles. His current research projects investigate the question of postcoloniality in the wake of the Négritude movement, and “Aimé Césaire on Screen.”  He was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Knight in the Order of Academic Palms) by the French government. From 2009 to 2015, he held the title of Halverson-Bascom Professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.