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Shanna Jean-Baptiste is Assistant Professor in the Department of French at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her research and teaching interests lie in Francophone West African and Caribbean literature, with a special emphasis on Haitian literature. Her expertise extends to identity formation, gender politics, visual art, music, and Afrofuturist aesthetics within the Francophone context.

Her current book manuscript, Global Jim Crow South: Mapping Jim Crow Violence and Intimacies across Haiti and the U.S. South, contends that Jim Crow violence shaped and was shaped by the U.S. empire. It centers Haiti as a crucial focal point for understanding the global scope of Jim Crow violence and argues that the violence that structured the 1915-1934 American occupation of Haiti was not peripheral but integral to the racial violence of the Jim Crow South. Her second book project delves into expressions of futurity and Afrofuturism in the Francophone world.

She holds a joint Ph.D. from Yale in French and African American Studies.

 

Education:

Ph.D., Yale University
M.A., Yale University
B.A., City College of New York, CUNY
A.A., Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY 

Fields of Research: 

Afrofuturist aesthetics in the French-speaking world
Nineteenth-century Haitian literature
Caribbean and West African literatures
Identity Formation and Gender politics
Diaspora Studies
Visual Art and Music
Digital Humanities 

Graduate Courses:

Intimacy and Violence in the Haitian Novel
Francophone Afrofuturism 

Undergraduate Courses: 

Francophone Afrofuturism
French Civilization from the Revolution to the Present
Modern French Literature