#  FRENCH 089 - Ghosts, spirits and freaks of the Creole world: Bolom soungas ek soucouyants 

 





 Semester:   Spring 

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 Year offered:  2026 

 

 

 

Reading novels, plays, tales and stories from the Creole world (Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Louisiana), we will explore the inhuman in all its manifestations: the preternatural such as spirits, ghosts and zombies, and the aberrant such as human-animal hybrids and “freaks” displayed in colonial human zoos. Through the lens of the inhuman, we will discuss colonial brutality, precolonial worldviews and their evolution post-colonization, and decolonial and alternative forms of knowledge.

Course conducted in French.



 

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##  Instructor 

 



  [### Usha Rungoo

 ](/people/usha-rungoo) [usha\_rungoo@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:usha_rungoo@fas.harvard.edu)Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures

 

 

 Research and teaching interests: Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean Literatures; material and embodied histories; the use of autoethnography, fiction and imagination in rewriting colonized identities, cartographies and histories; extractive... 

 

 

      ![Usha Rungoo](/sites/g/files/omnuum8296/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-03/usha%20jpg.jpg?itok=DbWU6iG3) 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ 70-100 ](/class-categories/70-100)
- [ Usha Rungoo ](/instructor/usha-rungoo)
- [ French ](/language/french)
- [ Spring 2026 ](/class/term/spring-2026)