Kanak women: a generation between tradition and modernity
Dienstag, 27.01.2026, 18:00 UhrVortrag der OSPG, Wien
This study started on the idea that women’s opinion and teaching had not been recorded as often as men’s. Kanak women’s voices are not often heard, even though they play an important part in the transmission of knowledge. I interviewed women born in the 1960s and the 1970s who were brought up in the traditional ways and were faced with many changes during their lives as women, wives and mothers. During our conversations, they reflected on their youth, their values and how they want to help the younger generations. Christiane studied History at the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris and completed a Doctorate on the History of the Kanak population. She moved to New Zealand and was first employed as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Otago in 2008, focusing her research on the literature of the French-speaking Pacific islands, with a particular interest in the literature of New Caledonia. She studied the emergent indigenous literature of this region through the lens of ethnography and history. The colonisation of the Pacific islands by the French left a mark on the culture and influenced the style of writing as well as the topics. She researches the portraits of the Kanak by the French, as well as the Kanak testimony of their own history and situation. She also researches childhood and identity, analysing the ties between tradition and social break up, introspection and search for identity in the spatiotemporal location of childhood. This presentation is part of her latest research on Kanak women.
Vortrag von Dr. Christiane Kasarhérou-Leurquin , (University of Otago, New Zealand)
Ort: HS A, Institut für Kultur- und Sozialsanthropologie, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien
