Acknowledgements
This project was completed in 2017 during a period of research leave granted by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. I am very grateful to the university and especially to the College of Liberal Arts and the Modern Languages department for their support.
I also want to thank my colleagues in the department and in the College of Liberal Arts for their encouragements and for their feedback at the beginning of my project when I presented it to our local academic community. Equally, I am grateful to my students in the graduate class FREN 570 The French Republic and its Others. Franco-Maghrebi Artists in Contemporary France for their precious comments and class discussions that nurtured my critical thinking on the topic and pushed my analysis further.
I very much benefitted from the constant financial support coming from Dr. Jordan Kellman, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, who’s office covered some of the costs for the copyrights; from Dr. Robert McKinney’s Academic Affairs Division who granted me a Summer Research Grant and Travel Research Grants to help with my academic research in the last years and from the generous donners who have financed my Endowed Laborde and Neuer/ BORSF Professorship in Francophone Studies since 2014. All the above mentionned financial support sources allowed me to present my findings at prestigious international conferences, cover the costs involved with the publication process and copyrights.
I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewers of my manuscript who provided me with extremely helpful comments. Their comments and suggestions allowed me to reflect on and later incorporate different aspects related to the work of Franco-Maghrebi artists in France. Many thanks also to the editors at Brill Publishers, more specifically to Christa Stevens and her team.
My utmost gratitude also goes to Jo Ann Kiser for her intellectual and professional support in helping with the proofreading and editing of my manuscript. I also very much appreciated the unconditional help that came from Caroline Huey and Celina Atwi with reading different versions of my chapters and of my introduction at the early stages of the project.
Very special thanks to Zoulikha Bouabdellah for allowing me to reproduce two screenshots of her video installations “Dansons” and “Vois-le”.
To all the friends, colleagues from Louisiana and elsewhere, and family members that I cannot mention here by name for reasons of space, I am forever grateful for their constant support and encouragement. This book is dedicated to all of them and to all the people who have believed in me.