Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice Director of Africana Studies
Research Topics:
- Race, gender, and justice
- Black feminism
- Haitian Studies
- African diasporic literatures
- Rape culture
- Black France
- World literatures in French
- Girlhood studies
Current Research Project:
Professor Jean-Charles’s first book is Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014).
She has two forthcoming books:
A Trumpet of Conscience for the 21st Century (Orbis Press, 2021) is a trade book that looks at three social justice movements—the movement for Black Lives, #metoo, and prison abolition through the lens of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s lesser-known speeches in The Call to Conscience.
Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2022)is a critical study of three contemporary Haitian authors Yanick Lahens, Kettly Mars, and Évelyne Trouillotthat will be out early next year.
She is currently working on a fourth book tentatively entitled, Ti Fi at the Center: Holding Haitian Girlhood which explores visual and literary representations of Haitian girls, and is in the very early stages of a project about the intersections of race, gender, and justice in Black France.
Recent News/Publications:
“Somebody, Anybody Sing a Black Girl’s Song…Edwidge Danticat and Haitian Girlhood.” The Bloomsbury Companion to Edwidge Danticat. Eds. Jana Braziel and Nadège Clitandre. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2021.161-75.
“Getting Around the Poto Mitan: Reconstructing Haitian Womanhood.” Eds. Valérie Orlando and Cécile Accilien. Teaching Haiti Beyond Literature: History, Politics, Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2021. 15-33.
“Nou pa gen vizibilite: Haitian Girlhood and the Logics of (In)Visibility.” The Black Scholar 50. 4 (Oct/Nov 2020): 43-53.
“Locations of Identity: Class and Diaspora in the Evelyne Trouillot’s Le Rond-point.” Francophone Literatures and World Literatures. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2020. 194-205.
Recent Talks:
“Gender, Unruliness, and Ecology in the Global Caribbean,” Global Caribbean Symposium, “The Global Caribbean: Resisting Borders of Geography and Identity,” Stanford University, May 2021.
“I Look for Other Worlds: The Art of Haitian Feminism.” Williams College, April 2021.
A Keynote Conversation with Black Lives Matter Founder Patrisse Cullors, Boston College Women’s Summit, February 2021.
“Where #BLM Meets #MeToo.” United Way Webinar. February 2021.
Public Writing:
“The Status of Black Girlhood in Light of Mikayla Miller’s Death”
Ms. Magazine 1 March 2021. “Haitian Politics and Dreams for My Father”
Ms. Magazine 12 February 2021. “Amy Coney Barrett’s ‘Happy-Go-Lucky Haitian Children’…”
“I’ve Had to Prepare My Classroom for Two Pandemics.” The Boston Globe. 13 September 2020.
“Milton, What Kind of Town Do We Want to Be?” The Boston Globe. 18 June 2020.
“The Confrontation with France’s Slave Past in Bordeaux,” Africa is a Country 21 August 2019,
Undergraduate Research Projects:
n/a
Past Research Projects:
n/a