Anny-Dominique Curtius earns Graduate College Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award

Anny-Dominique Curtius (M.A and Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Université de Montréal) is Professor of Francophone Studies. She is also the Director of the working group “Museum Futures” at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

Her interdisciplinary work interweaves cultural theory and cinematic, visual, and performing arts of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and Sub-Saharan Africa; post/de/colonial museum studies; tidalectical ecocriticism; the defacement and toppling of the iconography of slavery in the public space.

Her latest work, Suzanne Césaire. Archéologie littéraire et artistique d'une mémoire empêchée [Suzanne Césaire. Literary and Artistic Archeology of a Hindered Memory] (2020) is the first book that explores entangled modes of silencing, recognition, and misrepresentation of Suzanne Césaire along with the seminal ecopolitical perceptiveness and aesthetics of the earth of this Martinican cultural theorist. Her other book Symbioses d’une mémoire: Manifestations religieuses et littératures de la Caraïbe [Symbiosis of a Memory: Caribbean Religions and Literatures] (2006) examines creolized religiosity, slavery and Black Atlantic Christianity in Early Modern narratives, contemporary ethnographic texts, and literary and cultural productions of the Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean.

She is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters in leading edited volumes and journals such as The South Atlantic Quarterly, Romanic Review, Small Axe, International Journal of Francophone Studies, French Forum, Présence Africaine, L’esprit créateur, Revue de Littérature comparée, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana. She has three works in progress including a single-authored book that examines the entangled narrativization of slavery in politically charged memorials, performativities, visual arts and in the post-museum, and two co-edited volumes Francophonies of the Early Modern, and Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements. 

Selected Publications 

Books 

• Suzanne Césaire. Archéologie littéraire et artistique d'une mémoire empêchée, Paris: Karthala, 2020, 396 pp (ISBN: 9782811127947).
  ---Reviewed in  The French Review, Vol. 96, n^o 2, (December 2022): 257-258 || New West Indian Guide, 96 (2022): 417-418 || French Studies, Vol. XX, n^o XX (2022): 1–2 || Nouvelles Études Francophones, Vol. 36, n^o1 & 2, (2021): 340-343 || Women in French, Vol. 29, (2021): 174-175

• Symbioses d’une mémoire: Manifestations religieuses et littératures de la Caraïbe, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006, 312 pp.,  (ISBN 2-296-01056-3). (Reviewed in Research in African Literatures, Summer 2011, Journal of Haitian Studies, Spring 2007, Études littéraires africaines, December 2007)

Book Reviews 

• John E. Drabinski, Glissant and the Middle Passage: Philosophy, Beginning, Abyss. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019, in New West Indian Guide, vol. 94, no 3 & 4, 2020: 77-78.
• Couti, Jacqueline. Dangerous Creole Liaisons, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016, in New West Indian Guide, vol. 92, no 1-2, 2018: 59-60
• Césaire, Suzanne. The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissident (1941-1945), edited by Daniel Maximin and translated by Keith L. Walker, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2012, in Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 21, no 4, November 2013: 566-567

Journal Articles 

• "La nudité fissurée de Zabou dans Timbuktu d'Abderrahmane Sissako" (PDF). In Nouvelles Études Francophones, Special issue, vol. 36, no 1-2, 2021: 137-155

• "Suzanne Césaire et la Tropiques-poétique du morne: De Tropiques aux patrimoines immatériels des noeuds de mémoire" (PDF), Revue de Littérature comparée, N° 4, octobre-décembre, 2017, pp. 404-421.

• "Cannibalizing Doudouisme, Conceptualizing the Morne: Suzanne Césaire’s Caribbean Ecopoetics” (PDF), The South Atlantic Quarterly, 115-3, July 2016, 513-139.

• "Bénarès de Barlen Pyamootoo ou la poétisation d’un habitus mémoriel à l’écran” (PDF), in Tropics, edited by Valérie Andrianjafitrimo-Magdelaine, Yolaine Parisot, Guilhem Armand, N° 4, 2017, pp. 65-83.

• “Tropiques: le dialogue créole et écopoétique d’Aimé et Suzanne Césaire” (PDF) In Césaire 2013: ‘parole due’, edited by Romuald Fonkoua and Anne Douaire-Banny, Présence Africaine, no189: 141-151, 2014.

• “De cuerpos desnudos pintados y de estatuas decapitadas: La historia interpretativa de Fort-de-France” Special issue of Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, Francia en Latinoamérica/Latinoamérica en Francia, xxxix, no 78, 2013, pp. 175-194.

• “Lorsque la rastalogie, la dub poetry et l'Antillanité-Tout-Monde d' Édouard Glissant entrent en relation" (PDF). Revue des Sciences Humaines, Special issue, "Entours d' Édouard Glissant", N° 309, Janvier-Mars 2013: 55-72.

• "Aimé Césaire" in The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, Sangeeta Ray and Henry Schwarz, José Luis Villacañas Berlanga, Alberto Moreiras and April Shemak (eds), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2016.

• “Utopies du BUMIDOM: Construire l’avenir dans un là-bas postcontact” (PDF) in Special issue, French Forum, Vol. 35, N° 2-3, Spring/Fall 2010:135-155.

• “Gandhi et Au-Béro, ou comment inscrire les traces d’une mémoire indienne dans une négritude martiniquaise” (PDF), in Special issue of L’Esprit créateur entitled “Indian Ethnoscapes: Kala Pani Narratives in Francophone Literature”, Vol. 50, No. 2, (2010):109-123.

• “The Great White Man of Lambaréné by Bassek Ba Kobhio: When Translating a Colonial Mentality Loses its Meaning” (PDF) in FLS (French Literature Series), French and Francophone Literature and Film in/and Translation Vol. XXXVI, pp.115-130, 2009.

• “À Fort-de-France les statues ne meurent pas” (PDF), in Special issue dedicated to the Memory of Aimé Césaire, Departmentalization at Sixty: The French DOMs and the Paradoxes of the Periphery, International Journal of Francophone Studies, Vol. 11, Issue 1, pp. 87-106, 2008.

• "Pièces d'identités de Mweze Ngangura: racines et rhizomes en contexte de tiers espace", FLS (French Literature Series), Imagined Geographies in French and Francophone Literature and Film, Vol. XXX, 2003, pp. 151-165.

• "Briser Les silences du palais pour exorciser la mémoire, dire l’urgence de vivre", in Le Maghreb Littéraire, vol.VI, n.12, 2002, pp. 64-81.

• "La créolité de Chamoiseau:phénomène nouveau ou continuité d’un détour ‘nègzagonal’" FLS (French Literature Series) Beginnings in French Literature, Vol. XXIX, 2002, pp. 181-196.

Book Chapters

• "Tropiques à Fort-de-France", In Colonisations. Notre histoire. Ed. Pierre Singaravélou Yala Kisukidi, Mélanie Lamotte, Arthur Asseraf, Guillaume Blanc, Paris : Seuil, (Forthcoming in 2023)

• "Des pieds, mon pied de Fabienne Kanor ou l'auto-analyse mémorielle de la parole des pieds." In Fabienne Kanor in Transgression, Ed. Gladys Francis, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, (in press)

• "Anarchives féminines trans~e ~atlantiques et tidalectics chez Suzanne Césaire, Kamau Brathwaite et Lorna Goodison”, in L’Atlantique littéraire au féminin. Approches comparatistes edited by Chloé Chaudet, Stefania Cubeddu-Proux, Jean-Marc Moura, Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2020.

• "Slavery Memorials," in Postcolonial Realms of Memory, edited by Etienne Achille, Charles Forsdick, Lydie Moudileno, Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2020, p.167-185.

• "Unshackling the Ocean: Screening Affect and Memory in Guy Deslauriers’s Passage du Milieu~The Middle Passage” (PDF) in Celluloid Chains: Slavery in the Americas through Film, edited by Rudyard J. Alcocer, Kristen Block, & Dawn Duke, University of Tennessee Press, 2018, pp. 121-146.

• “Coalescence et dissonance des poétiques de la dé/mesure chez Camus, Césaire, Fanon et Glissant.” In Albert Camus-Aimé Césaire: Poétiques de la révolte edited by Alexander Dickow and Buata Malela, Paris: Herman, 2018, pp. 199-209.

• "Of Naked Body and Beheaded Statue: Performing Conflicting History in Fort-de-France." In Critical Perspectives on Conflict in Caribbean Societies of the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries, edited by Patricia Donatien and Rodolphe Solbiac, New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 9-30.

• "Une entrevue avec Fabienne Kanor", in Metropolitan Mosaics and Melting-Pots: Paris and Montreal in Francophone Literatures, edited by Pascale De Souza & Adlai Murdoch, New Castle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, pp. 223-237.

• "Unidad en la diversidad en el Caribe: religiónes y espacio literario", in Pizarro, Ana. (ed), El archipiélago de fronteras externas. Culturas del Caribe hoy, Santiago de Chile: Editorial de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile, 2002, pp. 87-130.

• "Désontologisme et réontologisme des esclaves et des marrons" in Bernabé, Jean; Bonniol, Jean-Luc; Confiant, Raphaël; L’etang, Gerry (eds), Au visiteur lumineux. Des îles créoles aux sociétés plurielles. Mélanges offerts à Jean Benoist, Pointe-à-Pitre: Ibis Rouge, 2000, pp. 103-114.

Conferences co-organized

• Crossing Borders Conference, Rethinking Memory and Trauma: New Directions in Cultural and Visual Studies, University of Iowa, (April 22-23,2016).

• Corssing Borders Conference, Transcultural Communication and Migrations in the Indian Ocean Rim and the Caribbean, University of Iowa, (March 23-24,2012).

Professional Activities

• Co-Director of "Museum Futures", Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

• Director of the Working Group 'Circulating Cultures', Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (2014-2018)

• Co-Director of the Caribbean, Diaspora, and Atlantic Studies Program (2009-2016)

Teaching

Graduate courses

• Francophone Thought

• Crossing Borders Seminar: "Rethinking Memory and Trauma: New Directions in Cultural and Visual Studies" (team-taught with Marie Kruger, Department of English)

• Topics in Contemporary Critical Theory: Creolization as Theory

• Francophone Women Theorists

• Crossing Borders Seminar: "Transcultural Communication and Migration in the Indian Ocean Rim and Caribbean" (team-taught with Sujatha Sosale, School of Journalism and Mass Communication)

• The Changing Faces of Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa in Literature, Visual Culture, and Postcolonial Theory

• Gorée, Pondichéry and Paris in the Caribbean

• Screening Slavery

• Women in Francophone Literature and Cinema

• Francophone Studies: Open Spaces

• Introduction to Graduate Study in French

Upper-level undergraduate courses 

• Slavery Museums, Memorials, and Statues: The United States, Europe, and the Global South

• Gender, Bodies Land and Diasporas in Literature and Visual Arts: The Caribbean and the Indian Ocean

• Mapping Haiti: Native and African Heritage, Slave Revolution, New World Modernity

• Francophone Cinemas

• West African Literature and Cinema: Beginnings, Evolutions, and Transgressions

• Narrations of Slavery in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean

• Race, Gender, Politics and Identity/ies in Francophone Caribbean Literature 

Undergraduate Courses

• Global Cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Saint-Pierre, team-taught with Aron Aji (Literary Translation) and Yasmine Ramadan (Arabic Studies)

• French-Speaking Cultures

• Honors First-Year Seminars: Caribbean Cinema: Cuba, Haiti, Martinique and Trinidad; Caribbean Religions in Cinema, Music and the Arts

• Introduction to Reading and Writing in Literature

• Intermediate French II, Honors

Ph.D. Dissertations Director in French and Francophone World Studies 

• Hadley Galbraith, (2022)
  Bigidi Memory of Survival: Performing the Inheritance of Resilience Under Slavery in Text, Film, and Performance

• Pauline Remy, (2010-2015)
  Infiltrating the Colonial City through the Imaginaries of Métissage: Saint-Louis (Senegal), Saint-Pierre (Martinique) and Jeremie (Haiti)

• Vanessa Borilot, (2009-2014)
  En mal de mots: représentations de la figure paternelle dans les littératures de la Caraïbe et des Mascareignes

• Maricelle Pinto-Tomás, (2012)
  El Caribe en voz menor

• Moussa Fall, (2005-2010)
  Histoire coloniale et postcoloniale de l’Afrique de l’Ouest  à travers les figures du griot dans les films d’Ousmane Sembène

• Jennifer Howell, (2005-2010)
  Popularizing Historical Taboos, Transmitting Postmemory: The French-Algerian War in the Bande Dessinée

• Sonia Kpota-Richardson, (2005-2010)
  Réalités et fictions du travail de l’immigré subsaharien dans la France postcoloniale

• Sharon Meilahn Bartlett, (2009)
  Foundering Men, Thriving Women: Gender, Politics and the Crisis of Masculinity in Haiti and Algeria

Member of Ph.D. Dissertation Committees in the following departments: English; History; Religious Studies; Spanish and Portuguese