Mildred Mortimer
- Professor Emeritus
- FRENCH
Biography
Mildred (“Mimi”) Mortimer is Professor Emerita of Francophone Literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder, having taught courses in French language and literature as well as Francophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean in French and in translation from 1984 until 2010. She also taught at the University of Algiers, Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, and the University of Côte d’Ivoire. Born and raised in New York, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, a Master’s degree from Harvard University, a doctorate in French literature from Columbia University. She has held the following grants: Fulbright teaching award to Côte d’Ivoire, NEH research grant.
Her book publications include: Women Fight Women Write: Texts on the Algerian War, Writing from the Hearth: Public, Domestic and Imaginative Space in Francophone Women’s Fiction of Africa and the Caribbean; Maghrebian Mosaic: A Literature in Transition (edited work), Journeys through the French African Novel, Mouloud Mammeri, écrivain algérien; Contes Africains (edited work). In addition, she has published English translations of Leïla Sebbar, The Seine was Red (La Seine était rouge) and Silence on the Shores (Le Silence des Rives), as well as numerous articles that have appeared in French Review, Research in African Literatures, World Literature Today, L’Esprit Créateur, Callaloo, Journal of Maghrebi Studies, Expressions Maghrébines, Francophone Postcolonial Studies. She has given papers and organized panels at meetings of the MLA (Modern Language Association), CIEF (Conseil International d’Etudes Francophones), ASA (African Studies Association), ALA (African Literature Association), MESA (Middle East Studies Association) and has been an invited speaker to universities in the United States and abroad.
Her research interests concern Francophone literature of the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. She reviews books for the Journal of North African Studies and is co-editor of CARAF BOOKS, a series published by the University of Virginia Press designed to make available to English-speaking readers the works of contemporary francophone writers in the French Caribbean and Africa.