Francophone African Theater and Performance

This guide provides information about the initial steps in research, search tips, resources available through databases and other materials at CU-Boulder, and open access (OA) resources available on the Internet.

Your professor will establish the rules of using AI in your work. A guideline you can follow is to always disclose when you have used AI and how you utilized it, following your Professor's stipulation. 

AI models, such as a ChtGPT, Google Gemini, and Cluade, are generative AI models that can generate new content using human-like language that is not present in the original data. These models use a large amount of text, images, audio, and video materials that are taken from the Internet. Predictive AI, on the other hand, uses past data to predict something, like Netflix, which uses AI models to learn your content selection pattern so it can recommend additional content.

It is essential to remember that generative AI models generate text, and although they appear to "understand" what you are asking and "respond" accordingly, they do not comprehend meaning like humans do. AI models have been trained to imitate human-like communication, but they cannot reason. 

Risks

• Hallucinations: Bad data that passed as "real" because of the "confident-sounding" response to a prompt, even when the generated text is false. 
• Bias: Generative AI systems may amplify existing bias through their training data and outputs. We should critically assess AI outputs to ensure we are meeting our individual and institutional standards for non-prejudiced narratives.
• Misinformation: It is critical you develop your information literacy skills so that when you use a generative AI space for information seeking, you do not prioritize "efficiency" over the evaluation of information. Since humans train AI models, some unethical individuals can train an AI model to create false information, even defying historical truths, such as the existence of the Holocaust, for example. Your information literacy skills will help you critically examine information.
• Homogenization: Be also wary of the “homogenization” of ideas to fit the “norm.” Human knowledge grows when we value "unique social, cultural, and political contributions."
• Sustainability: We do not think much about the energy that AI uses when we interact with a model. Regarding the increase in carbon emissions and higher electricity demand, "most AI companies do not share how much energy their models require, leaving consumers and regulators in the dark."

Find more information:

• MIT Technology Review on AI Energy Footprint
• AI at CU Boulder
• AI Tools List at CU Boulder
• Data Classification: Public, confidential, and highly confidential

 Information provided by the course AI Literacy Foundations offered at CU Boulder. 

Your topic should facilitate a critical approach that integrates some of the theories covered in your course.

Your research topic may be born through different channels:

• Read your syllabus carefully and pay attention to a topic covered in class that you found interesting and that you do not know much about it.
  • You may choose a topic that is related to the central theme of the course and is of interest to you.
• Expand on a subject that is highlighted in one of the theatrical performances you watched and you found relevant.
• Cover a topic (from your own optic) that was suggested in one of the books or articles you read.
• Browse online media to gather topic ideas.
• Browse background sources to gather topic ideas.

Your research question will be related to your topic. This question usually answers a matter that has not been covered by previous scholarship.

Developing Research Questions: Your Purpose

Consider where your questions will lead you. Will your questions:

• Compare and contrast
  • How is play X alike or different from play Y?
  • How is dramatist X's contribution different from dramatist Y's?
  • How do different francophone dramatists cover the same topic?
    • How do the Algerian dramatists Kateb Yacine and Aziz Chouaki cover the topic of the exploitation of natural resources in their work?
• Associate your topic with another 
  • How did a topic happen in relation to another topic?
  • What is the dispossession legacy of the French colonial practice of removal of agricultural resources from Algerian land after its independence? 
• Interpret the state of your topic
  • Explain the significance of X and how you can measure this significance
    • What is the significance of Congolese playwrights' use of metaphors, satire, and allegory to refer to political corruption?
• Explore possibilities or outcomes
  • What are the consequences of X
  • How does X affect Y
• Lead to a call for action or change
  • How do artistic expressions work as a call for change?
    • How do the “theater of corruption” or “the dance of the powerful” empower the Congolese society to denounce political corruption?
• Argue for a particular stance
  • Present opposing views and argue in favor or against a view

Exercise: Your Research Topic

Background sources are really helpful at the beginning stages of your research process. These sources will give us ideas for research topics and keywords and even provide further information that may be useful.

Keywords and related terms are those words and phrases that are related to the topic of your research. These terms may be synonymous with a word or a related term. We use keywords to enhance our searches and gather as much scholarship as we can in relation to a topic.

Look at the example below and see how these words are related to my topic:

Example

My topic: Cameroonian Dramatists: Theatrical Expression through Comedy and Ritual Theatre

Boolean operators help you connect, expand or exclude your searches.

Examples:

Guillaume Oyono-Mbia AND independence movements

Guillaume Oyono-Mbia AND bilingualism

Anne Ubersfeld AND Lire le théâtre AND semiotics

 Gustave Akakpo  AND drama OR "Théâtre togolais de langue française" 

 "post-colonial dramatists" OR "Togolese playwrights" AND Gustave Akapko NOT Kangni Alemdjrodo 

Slimane Benaïssa AND theatre AND exile AND trauma OR algerian people

• Paternalism
• Tribalism
• Colonialism to independence and national unity
• The legacy of colonialism
• Post-colonial identity and self-definition
• Despotism
• Social inequality
• political corruption
• French language versus native languages
• Oppression by the native elite after independence 
• reclaiming collective memory
• Diaspora: migration and displacement within and outside of Africa

Keywords and Related Terms

• Mobutu’s regime
• Life in Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo)
• Congolese society
• Inter-African migration
• Resource exploitation
• Gap between the population and the political elite (inequality)
• Street children
• Gold diggers
• False prophets
• Artisanal exploitation of Africa's mineral wealth (resource struggles)

Setting: Set in the late 1990s, during the decline of Mobutu’s dictatorship. The background of the story also deals with migration from Congo to Angola.

Reflection: Collective and personal suffering is hidden behind festive music, dance, and laughter (resilience) 

Keywords and Related Terms:

• Theatrical work
• Family tensions
• Divergent views
  • Marxism (dad); bible-based belief (mom); autonomy and self-transformation (son)
• Martyrdom
• Power and exploitation
• Post-independence Congo
• Surrealism
• Humorous and poetic language as a tool for social and political commentary

Setting: Family life, highlighting divergent viewpoints

Reflection:

• How does adaptation help people coexist with past trauma and the reality of exploitation in postcolonial Congo?
•  How are personal and collective identities influenced by ideologies in the search for meaning within a society that has lived under a dictatorship?