Here's an overview of my research publications, plus a brief introduction to the author who was the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation.
Who was
Édouard Glissant?
Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) was a writer and philosopher from the small Caribbean island of Martinique. Martinique is an overseas department of France, which means that it's as much a part of France as Hawaii is of the United States, and its inhabitants are full French citizens.
However, the island was formerly a French sugar plantation colony, and it has a very strained relationship with the mainland across the Atlantic. It's also home to a large number of award-winning writers, who have interrogated and strongly criticized the colonial past and its legacies -- Glissant is one of these.
"A Schizophrenia That Wasn't One: Édouard Glissant and Poetry, Painting and Politics in 1950s Paris"
French Forum 41.3: 257-272
Until recently, little was known about Édouard Glissant’s pursuits during his time as a writer in Paris during the 1950s and late 1940s. Scholars – when they did discuss the subject – painted a picture of Glissant as a political firebrand: highly active in anticolonial movements. This article reveals a completely different dimension to his work, involving art galleries, friendships with young French poets, and literary collaborations that Glissant would strive to keep secret. Read more about what he has described as his own contemporary “schizophrenia,” with a synopsis and link to the article here.
“Histoire de nègre ou le début d’une ‘aventure théâtrale’ avec Édouard Glissant et l’Institut Martiniquais d’Études: Entretien avec Juliette Éloi-Blézès.”
Nouvelles Études Francophones 30.2 (2015): 42-56
This is an interview with a colleague of Édouard Glissant, who worked with him in Martinique during the 1970s — a time of violent social unrest, labor struggles and police brutality on the island. Get a link to the interview, and read a synopsis of it here, to find out how Glissant used community theater, art and education to empower working-class Martinicans and local Martinican youth during this period.
“Don't Trust the Author: Suspect Texts in Édouard Glissant's Tout-monde.”
Romanic Review 106.3-4 (2014): 361-80
Winner of the 2015 Northeast Modern Language Association
Caribbean Studies Essay Award.
This award-winning research article examines Édouard Glissant's polemical 1993 novel, Tout-monde. An extremely experimental book in terms of its literary style, it led to him being heavily criticized upon its publication for having abandoned the anti-colonial politics of his youth. Discover why I push back against such criticisms, and get a link to the article here.
“Regard, spectacle et séduction dans trois récits merveilleux (Gueullette, Bibiena, Marmontel).”
Dix-huitième Siècle 45 (2013): 481-493
Sex. The supernatural. Eerie, winged beings that materialize out of thin air - and vanish back into it - called sylphs. An 18th-century craze for the fantastic. Men desperately seeking to seduce women.
It's all happening in these three texts from the Enlightenment. Click here for a link to my research article about them, and to find out more about what this literature has to do with anxieties about truth, love, science, and illusion in Enlightenment France.