Dr. Jeanne Ngoh Dingome, Senior Lecturer at the University of Douala, Cameroon, is in residence at the University at Albany until June, 1996. Sponsored by the Fulbright program, she is hosted at the University by the Department of French Studies and the Institute for Research on Women.
During her tenure at Albany, Dr. Dingome is doing research on Francophone women playwrights, a topic which is part of her book-length project on Pan-African Francophone theater. She has observed that "there is a woman-powered rejuvenation of Francophone theater whose base is Africa and the Caribbean, a movement which is not unrelated to the degrading of meaning for the people and the erosion of female identity in those parts of the world. Drawing from their past where women have always functioned as inventors of survival, the plays of Cameroon's Werewere Liking, Martinique's Ina Cesaire and Guadeloupe's Simone Schwarz-Bart have, as it were, rebirthed Francophone theater by simply reconstructing the narrative of grassroots womanhood as an assertive moral and cultural force in the society."
Professor Dingome, with a bachelor's degree from Washington State University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Sorbonne university in Paris, teaches at the University of Douala in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences where she heads the Department of Bilingual Studies. She also serves as Deputy Director of the University's Research and Publications Division and is the bilingual editor of two journals of the University, as well as co-author of The Liking Reader (in press).
Professor Dingome may be contacted through the IROW office at (518) 442-3311.