Introduction: Caribbean Entanglements in Times of Crises

I am interested in projects related to citizenship, nationalism and development mainly in the Atlantic and Pacific regions. My current projects are focused on the sorts of claims that populations deemed diasporic make on states, and how these reconfigure their communities and general sociocultural practices. I am also interested in development's impact on social and economic environments, and the way this structures and restructures people's assessments of their spaces for the articulation and pursuit of particular kinds of freedoms. I have attempted to project these perspectives in my recent book, "Globalization and the Postcreole Imagination: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation" (July 2009) and my current project: "Governing the Present: Vistas, Violence and the Politics of Place" that examines the quests for place and freedoms among populations in the Caribbean, Pacific and South Africa.

I am also an associate research fellow on a project called 50:50 at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, that examines post-independence socio-economic developments primarily in the Anglophone Caribbean, and suggests new ways for rethinking development in the region. As well I am part of a SALISES international working group, on Rural Resilience and Agricultural Development Studies. The Agrarian component of my contribution to these projects, utilizes the arguments and methodology developed in my earlier text, "Negotiating Caribbean Freedom: Peasants and State in Development." Combining the theorizing of creolization in my recent text, "Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation," with issues of development particularly related to notions of resilience, sustainability, governance, processes of rural "othering," that emerge from this vibrant and highly productive project; I am better equipped to tackle the question of governance, violence, otherness, and the quest for freedoms-subjects centered in my new work.

My career began with graduate training under Hélène Cixous (Paris VIII) and Barbara E. Johnson (Harvard University), and segued to faculty roles at the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque (1995-2002), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002-2008), and Duke University (2008-2025; Emerita, 2026-). I am an interdisciplinary scholar of French and Caribbean Literature and Culture, with particular interest in the “long 19^th century” in France and Haiti, cognitive literary studies, health humanities, and global south philosophy. Monographs, edited volumes, and translations include: Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (2011); Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (2001); Poetry of Haitian Independence (2015, with D. Kadish and N. Shapiro); Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignty (2011, with W. Anderson and R. Keller); Sarah, A Colonial Novella (2008, with D. Kadish); and "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays by Hélène Cixous (1991). Edited journal issues include The EcoBrain: Ecologies of Cognition and Cognitive Ecologies in Ecokritike (2025, with Cate Reilly, Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, and Hugh Roberts); Representation in Neusocience and Humanities in Frontiers Integrative Neuroscience and Psychology (2022, with Marco Iacoboni and Len White); States of Freedom, Freedom of States in The Global South (2012, with Michaeline Crichlow and Patricia Northover); The Haiti Issue: 1804 and Nineteenth-Century French Studies in Yale French Studies (2005). Duke University provided the opportunity for me not only to collaborate with others around humanities labs (the “Haiti Lab,” 2010-2013, and the “Health Humanities Lab”, 2016-2020), but to serve as a Research Professor of Global Health at the Duke Institute for Global Health, and an affiliate of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, where I co-directed the Neurohumanities Research Group, Duke Neurohumanities in Paris, and the Brain and Society theme of Bass Connections. In addition to my articles in humanities journals and edited volumes, I have published collaborative work in scientific venues including The American Psychologist (2023), Epilepsy and Behavior (2020), and Emerging Infectious Diseases (2011). My administrative roles at Duke included directing the Franklin Humanities Institute (2015-2017)and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2012-2014). Teaching opportunities have built on the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of my research, with courses including “Flaubert’s Brain: Neurohumanities,” “Haiti to New Orleans,” "Pandemic Humanities: Reimagining Health and Medicine in Romance Studies," “Storytelling in Medicine and Health,” “Trauma and Global Health," "Mimesis in Theory and Practice," and "Global Humanities in French.” Recent courses have built on my interests in philosophy, and include "Sylvia Wynter and Caribbean Philosophy," and co-taught courses with Felwine Sarr (“African Philosophy” and “Africana Philosophy in French”). 

As I embark on the Emeritus phase of my Duke faculty career, I am preparing, with John Gartrell, Meg Brown, and two of our Romance Studies graduate students, an exhibit and symposium for the opening of the Sylvia Wynter archives at Duke in early March2026, and I am working on the translation of a novel by the award-winning Haitian author Yanick Lahens.