
Jean-Luc Raharimanana playing the marovany.
Students in last semester’s course (FRE 306) “Wandering Utopias: Writing and Rewriting Reality” were tasked with analyzing the long history of travel narratives in utopian literature, using their own multidisciplinary creative writing projects to explore the philosophical and aesthetic implications of the genre.
They also did so in French.
“We wanted to give students the opportunity to engage in creative writing while developing their analytical skills and reflecting deeply on core concepts such as diversity, progress, social and political systems, or technology and its uses,” said course instructors Murielle Perrier and Raphaël Piguet.
“We were delighted to see students make meaningful connections between the various readings on travel and utopia throughout the semester and apply these concepts in their creative essays, which became more detailed and sophisticated as the semester progressed.”
Week to week, the class consisted of reflection assignments on the formal and philosophical issues of the works. These reflections were then integrated into a creative writing process that prompted students to adopt a narrator's perspective and develop the linguistic skills necessary to synthesize their critical knowledge into a final project—creating a utopian travelogue in French.
“The compositions were an amazingly liberating opportunity to practice my creative writing, and the topic of traveling utopias lends itself perfectly to this task,” wrote one. “At first, I was very hesitant to study French writing that was written centuries ago, but this course has shown me ways to successfully approach these more demanding texts while also finding unique insights/perspectives that one might not be able to find in more modern literature.”
In preparation for their own travelogues, students participated in a series of creative writing workshops. Foremost was a visit from Jean-Luc Raharimanana, a prize-winning Malagasy writer and musician whose book Tisser appeared on the syllabus. Raharimanana invited students to submit short works for immediate feedback, then gave a performance reciting his poetry to his own accompaniment on the marovany, a zither traditional to Madagascar.
“This was a really fun class to take to push that boundary and try to be more creative, artistic, and styled in a second language,” wrote one student, reflecting on the experience. “I have always been uncomfortable with creative writing even in English. I always saw French as an analytical language because I would often only write argumentative papers. This class gave me the chance to explore the aesthetics and beauty of the language in new ways!”
By the semester’s end, each student had developed their own creative narrative, fully fleshed out according to their personal understanding of “wandering utopias.” Their completed works are now posted on the McGraw Center’s Commons Platform.
Reading through the completed projects, Perrier and Piguet specifically admired the confidence students had developed in handling the material.
“They were able to compare, oppose, and draw conclusions from a variety of texts and films that each in their own ways asked the questions: what are the values that a ‘good’ society should be built on? How can they be determined?” they said.
“What was truly rewarding as a teacher was witnessing students' progress, curiosity, and growing interest in the topic.”