Originally founded by Tarana Burke in 2006, the “Me Too Movement” seeks to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly women of color, “to help find pathways to healing” (“metoomvmt.org/about/). Then, in the fall of 2017, the #MeToo hashtag reverberated throughout the Internet, on the front pages of newspapers, and in the public square as women began to “out” their aggressors for the world to see. The impact of the of the movement and the hashtag has extended far beyond the virtual public square to affect elections, changes consumer choices, and sculpt new markets for storytelling with a focus on women and girls, including literature in translation. While France had its own #MeToo movement, the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc (roughly, “#OutYourPig”), stories by women writing in French has come to greatly shape the literary translation market in the United States.

From 2008-2016, 221 titles by women were translated from French into English, but in the three years since the start of the “#MeToo era” there have been 130 new translations of women authors from French into English (Publisher’s Weekly “Translation Database). In this course, students will read recent translations of French and Francophone women’s writing in English to determine what the impact the politics of the “Me Too Movement” and the #MeToo era have had on the French translation market. The objectives for this course will be: 1) to consider how Afro-diasporic literature in translation responds to and shapes US debates on citizenship, class, diversity, gender and sexual identity, globalization, and race; 2) to consider how the US publishing industry markets, “packages,” and manufactures literature in French to a US English readership, and 3) to determine whether the works in question correspond to the politics of the “Me Too Movement” or the “#MeToo era and if so, to what end?