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Jeanne Jégousso

Jeanne Jégousso

Assistant Professor and Director of French

Jeanne Jégousso Jeanne Jégousso – Assistant Professor of French

Jeanne Jégousso is an assistant professor of French and Francophone studies and the director of the French program. Her areas of specialization include the French-speaking Caribbean and Indian Ocean, Louisiana Literature and Folklore, and Postcolonial Studies. She is the author of several peer-reviewed articles on the work of Édouard Glissant, Alfred Alexandre, as well as Haitian literary journals and poetry. She co-edited the collective volume Les Mondes d’Édouard Glissant/ The Worlds of Édouard Glissant, (Liverpool University Press) and Teaching, Reading, and Theorizing Caribbean Texts (Lexington Books). She also published the first English translation of Haiti’s first woman novelist, Cléante D. Valcin, in a volume titled Cruel Destiny and The White Negress Two Novels by Cléante Desgraves Valcin (Rutgers University Press). Together, these two novels expand the understanding of Caribbean literature, as well as the political struggles and artistic triumphs of Black women in the Americas.

She is the cofounder and codirector of the Library of Glissant Studies, a digital project dedicated to the work of and on Martinican author Edouard Glissant (1928-2011). She is currently working on her first book, titled La poétique du dépassement. Pour une nouvelle critique des littératures antillaises et indianocéaniques contemporaines, in which she proposes a new approach to theorizing contemporary Francophone literatures.

Professor Jégousso has translated two works by Haiti’s first published female novelist for a new book released this month by Rutgers University Press. Full story >

Areas of Expertise

  • French-speaking Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haïti)
  • Mauritian Literature written in French
  • Comorian Literature written in French
  • Postcolonial Studies
  • Digital Humanities

Courses Taught

  • French and Francophone Women Writers
  • An Introduction to Haitian Literature and Culture
  • From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean: A Survey of Literary Journals in French
  • Understanding Contemporary France Through Urban Cultures
  • Reshaping Colonial History: Decolonial Narratives in the Indian Ocean
  • Introduction to Postcolonial Studies
  • Gender & Sexuality in Francophone Cinema
  • The Forgotten Francophonies: A Study of French-speaking Asia and Pacific Regions.

Education

  • Ph.D., Louisiana State University
  • M.A., Louisiana State University
  • B.A., Université François Rabelais (Tours, France)

Publications

Translation Works

  • Cruel Destiny & White Negress by Cléante D. Valcin (Rutgers University Press, June 2024)
  • Windrush 75 In Verse, for Specimen. A Babel Review of Translations, December 2023.
  • French translation of 10 texts by Afro-british poets. Commissioned by the London Royal Society of Literature.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • “Relater et Translater: La Traduction palimpseste chez Cléante D. Valcin”, Traduire en archipel(s), end of 2024 (accepted)
  • “La poétique d’Ananda Devi : écrits de l’éclat et de l’obscur”, Interculturel francophonies, special issue, summer 2024.
  • “Les Mondes d’Édouard Glissant”, Francosphères, vol. 11, n°2, June 2022, pp. 1-10. 
  • “De la « terre désolée » à la « terre ardente » : (d)écrire la Terre dans la littérature haïtienne”, Contemporary French & Francophone Studies: Sites, vol. 25, n°3, June2021, pp. 341-348.
  • “Ainsi serons-nous les ethnopoéticiens de nous-mêmes : Sur les traces du Discours antillais d’Édouard Glissant”, Actes de colloque du Discours antillais, ITTM Editions, October 2020, pp. 745-760.
  • “Thinking Digital: Édouard Glissant and his Archives in the 21st Century”, Achipelagos, n°4, April 2020.
  • “L’Acacia de Claude Simon ou le dépassement généalogique.”, Nouvelles Francographies, n°7, 2018, pp. 9-18.

Book Chapters

  • “Theorizing Contemporary Mauritian Bandes Dessinées as a Pluriversal Praxis”, Un/Making Graphic History: BD and Narratives of Resistance in French, Edinburgh University Press, 2024.
  • “The Poetics of Liminality in Alfed Alexandre’s Le Bar des Amériques.”, Teaching, Reading, and Theorizing Caribbean Texts, Lexington Books, August 2020, pp. 87-97.
  • “L’écriture du dépassement : Édouard Glissant, critique littéraire.”, Édouard Glissant, l’éclat et l’obscur, Presses de l’Université des Antilles, Novembre 2020, pp. 313-320.