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Director of Africana Studies, Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, and 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 GlobeMs. Magazine, WGBH, America Magazine, and Cognoscenti, where she has weighed in on topics including #metoo, higher education, and issues affecting the Haitian diaspora.

View CV

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
“Madan Sara tells the Story of Haitian Women Who Are Bother Ordinary and Extraordinary” https://msmagazine.com/2021/02/28/madan-sara-review-haitian-women-haiti/ Ms. Magazine 1 March 2021. “Haitian Politics and Dreams for My Father” https://msmagazine.com/2021/02/12/haiti-protests-president-jovenel-moise/ Ms. Magazine 12 February 2021. “Amy Coney Barrett’s ‘Happy-Go-Lucky Haitian Children’…” https://msmagazine.com/2020/10/21/amy-coney-barrett-haiti-black-children-white-savior/ Ms. Magazine 21 October 2020. “I’ve Had to Prepare My Classroom for Two Pandemics.” The Boston Globe. 13 September 2020.

Courses

Course catalog
  • Black Feminisms 101

  • Race, Gender, and Justice

  • Transforming a Rape Culture