Régine Michelle Jean-Charles
Chair of The Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies; Director of Africana Studies; Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice; Professor of Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Régine Michelle Jean-Charles is a Black feminist literary scholar and cultural critic who works at the intersection of race, gender, and justice. Her scholarship and teaching in Africana Studies include expertise on Black France, Sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean literature, Black girlhood, Haiti, and the diaspora. She is the author of Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014), The Trumpet of Conscience Today (Orbis Press, 2021), and Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2022). She is currently working on two book projects–one explores representations of Haitian girlhood, and the other is a co-authored interdisciplinary study of sexual violence entitled The Rape Culture Syllabus. Dr. Jean-Charles is a regular contributor to media outlets like The Boston Globe, Ms. Magazine, WGBH, America Magazine, and Cognoscenti, where she has weighed in on topics including #metoo, higher education, and issues affecting the Haitian diaspora.
Books
1. Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2014. Paperback Edition 2016.
2. A Trumpet of Conscience for the 21st Century. New York: Orbis Press (In press).
3. Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism, Literary Ethics, and Haitian Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Forthcoming in 2022.
Recent Publications
1. “Contestations in Black Feminisms.” Oppositional Conversations. May 2021. http://www.oppositionalconversations.org/
2. “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.
3. “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.
4. “Nou pa gen vizibilite: Haitian Girlhood and the Logics of (In)Visibility.” The Black Scholar 50. 4 (Oct/Nov 2020): 43-53.
5. “Locations of Identity: Littérature-mondaine and the Ethics of Class in Évelyne Trouillot’s Le Rond-point.” Francophone Literatures and World Literatures. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2020. 194-205.
6. “Perceiving the Relationships in Nature: An Ecofeminist Reading of La Légende des fleurs” Marie Chauvet’s Theaters of Revolt: Action, Aesthetics and Adaptation. Eds. Christian Flaugh and Lena Taub. Amsterdam: Brill, 2019. 13-30.
7. “The Affect and Aesthetics of Fear in Evelyne Trouillot’s Novels” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender and the Black International 8.1 (2019): 15-21.
8. “Refugee: ‘When Home is the Mouth of a Shark’” Keywords for African-American Studies. Eds. Erica Edwards, Roderick Ferguson and Jeffrey Ogbar. New York: New York University Press, 2018. 172-74.
9. “Occupying the Center: Haitian Girlhood and Wake Work.” Small Axe 57 (November 2018): 40-50.
- National Women’s Studies Association
- Haitian Studies Association
- Caribbean Studies Association
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Education
Harvard University, PhD
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Contact
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Address
220-B
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Office Hours
Wednesdays (in-person) 12PM - 2PM
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Dialogues
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Associations
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Black Feminisms 101
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Race, Gender, and Justice
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Transforming a Rape Culture
Gender & Black World Literature: Feminist Futures
AFRS/ENGL/WMNS 3900
This course invites students to explore feminist speculative fiction as a site for social justice advocacy. Students will read classic feminist and afrofuturist science fiction as they prepare their own original short stories for publication. Drawing heavily on the work of feminist afrofuturist Octavia Butler, students will engage imaginative narratives that allow them to think through solutions to the problems of our time. Students will explore the genre elements of short stories and speculative fiction, ultimately integrating these lessons into their own short stories. This is a writing and reading intensive class.
