We are a collective of scholars and educators with rhizomatic roots stretching across the United States, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. While our expertise is varied, we come together through our belief that Caribbean literatures burst with vitality, beauty and ciphers with which to apprehend this changing world.
Jennifer Boum Make is Assistant Professor in the Department of French & Francophone Studies at Georgetown University. Her teaching and research include a focus on migration, and representations of otherness and hospitality in contemporary Caribbean and Mediterranean contexts. Her broad areas of interest include: Francophone postcolonial theory; Caribbean and Mediterranean Studies; ethics; as well as questions of mobility and circulation of people and cultures. She has published or has forthcoming publications in Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES, Convergences Francophones, Nouvelles Études Francophones, and Francosphères, among others.
Nathan H. Dize is a reader, researcher, and translator of Haitian literature. He is the translator of three Haitian novels: The Immortals by Makenzy Orcel (SUNY Press, 2020), I Am Alive by Kettly Mars (UVA Press, forthcoming), and Antoine des Gommiers by Lyonel Trouillot (Schaffner Press, forthcoming). Nathan has written for publications such as archipelagos, Caribbean Quarterly, Francosphères, the Journal of Haitian Studies, and sx salon; he also serves on the editorial board of the online magazine, Reading in Translation. He teaches French at Oberlin College.
Corine Labridy is a native Guadeloupean and an assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in contemporary Caribbean and urban literatures and is particularly interested in works that deploy laughter strategies and dystopian tropes to signify the effects of mainstream culture on minoritized literary and artistic production. She is currently the assistant editor of Imaginaries, an online publication affiliated with H-France that is concerned with all manner of poetic interpretations and representations of history. She was the managing editor of La Caricature, 1830–1835, a bilingual catalogue raisonné of the satirical journal’s complete lithographs, and she has written for Public Books, Small Axe and the CLR James Journal.
Erika Serrato is Assistant Professor and Lineberger Fellow in the Department of Romance Studies at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in French from Emory University. Her research focuses on intellectual and aesthetic exchanges between voices, texts, and figures from the Francophone, Hispanic, and Anglophone Caribbean. Her main questions concern what Édouard Glissant calls “l’Autre Amérique,” indigeneity, language, “l’entour,” and intersectional subjectivities. She has published in Women in French, sx salon and, most recently, on Jacques Roumain’s legacy of revolutionary poetics in Cuba. She has a forthcoming chapter on Taína cacica Anacaona’s representation in the works of Edwidge Danticat. She is currently working on a book manuscript regarding indigeneity in the Francophone Caribbean.
Jocelyn Sutton Franklin is Assistant Professor of French at Wofford College. A scholar of Francophone postcolonial studies, she received her PhD in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and holds a graduate certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her work focuses on race-based trauma in Franco-Caribbean literature and her publications have been featured in Karib and The Journal of Haitian Studies.
Lucy Swanson is Assistant Professor of French at the University of Arizona. Prior to 2018, she taught at Haverford and Lafayette Colleges in Pennsylvania. Her research on French-language Caribbean literature explores how contemporary writers represent the history and continued impact of colonization and the French Atlantic slave trade, including through the figure of the zombie. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including Small Axe, SITES: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, and International Journal of Francophone Studies. She is currently working on a book project entitled “Zombie Islands” on the living dead figure in contemporary French Caribbean fiction.
Charly Verstraet is Assistant Professor of French Studies in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research and teaching focus on Caribbean studies, ecocriticism, postcolonial studies, and translation studies. His articles, translations, and interviews on Caribbean literature and culture have appeared in publications and series such as Nouvelles Etudes Francophones, Francosphères, Small Axe Salon, and SITES: Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Penguin Classics, and the Presses Universitaires des Antilles.
kwazman vwa 