Ramon Fonkoue

Dr. Ramon A Fonkoué received most of his education in Cameroon before moving to the United States where he completed his PhD in Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. In the French & Italian department, he teaches French, francophone literatures (West African and French Caribbean) and cinema. His research examines subjectivity in literature and film in Africa and its diasporas, race and representation, individual and collective rapport with memory in French and African literatures and film and African arts, and nation building in the French Caribbean and Africa. Dr. Fonkoué recent publications include a co-authored translation of Carlo Severi’s works entitled Capturing Imagination: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought (2018), and a monograph: Nation Without Nation: History, Memory and Nation Building in Postcolonial Cameroon (2019). In spring 2022, he completed an online lecture series entitled "Clashing Representations of Africa in Film." Dr. Fonkoué currently has several research projects underway , including a monograph on political thought and the longing for a nation in French Caribbean literature, an edited volume on the city, urban life and culture in contemporary Francophone African literature and film, and a book project entitled Reclaiming the Spoils, which explores colonial looting of cultural property in Africa and studies issues raised by the ongoing struggles for restitution.