May 2025
Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership
Kalamazoo College, Michigan
“Untimely Periodicals” – Keynote with Mehdi Chalmers
In May 2025 - around Haitian Flag Day - I joined Mehdi Chalmers for a keynote at Africa Month: Disobedient Knowledge - Rethinking Higher Education with Africa and the Global South, a three-day conference organized by Manfa Sanogo and Dominique Somda at Kalamazoo College, Michigan.
In our talk “Untimely Periodicals: Haiti and the Archives of Caribbean Thought,” we explored Haitian literary journals as unruly archives - spaces where poetry, politics, and history meet on their own terms. Moving between Haiti and its diaspora, we traced how these publications nurture transnational and transgenerational conversations, and imagine futures outside - and often against - the frame of the nation-state. We closed by reflecting on our own editorial practice with Trois/Cent/Soixante, the multidisciplinary journal we co-founded in 2015, which centers Haitian, Caribbean, and African epistemologies.
Hosted at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, the conference fostered vibrant scholarly and community exchanges - from the talk by writer Ken Bugul, to decolonial workshops led by Divine Fuh. The Center’s windows featured What Would We Measure in a Decolonized World? by Anthony Oboyami, an installation layering photographs with translucent overlays. In his artistic statement, Oboyami reflects on tools like rulers, maps, clocks, and calendars as instruments of imperialism - devices of “synthetic precision” that impose boundaries, shape perception, and structure systems of knowledge and education.
2024-25 Academic Year
Museum of Fine Arts (MOFA)
Florida State University, Tallahassee
“Homo Sargassum” Exhibition
In 2024-2025, I was invited to contribute to the ambitious Homo Sargassum exhibition and symposium, a compelling exploration of sargassum - a brown, toxic algae that has been washing up along the Caribbean shores. Hosted at Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts (MOFA), the exhibition featured the works of over 25 Caribbean artists, spanning painting, mixed media, photography, video, and installation. I contributed short texts to the catalogue, offering insights into the artists and their work.
The exhibition’s design invited viewers to engage on multiple sensory levels, featuring listening stations where they could pause and experience poetry. I had the privilege of reading and recording Aimé Césaire’s “Algues” as part of this immersive experience.
I also invited my French 2 classes to visit the exhibition in both Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, encouraging each of them to select a piece that resonated with them. Their responses were thoughtful, deeply personal, and often eye-opening. For instance, in the photographs by artist Nadia Huggins, one student recognized Saint-Vincent, an island he had previously visited as a surfer. However, after witnessing the aftermath of the volcanic eruption of La Souffrière, the once-familiar landscape felt radically altered. This student’s experience perfectly encapsulated the exhibition’s educational impact: it encouraged viewers to rethink their assumptions, broaden their understanding of the Caribbean, and connect more deeply to the complex, ever-changing relationships between people, places, and environmental crises.
Later in 2025, the exhibition traveled to the United Nations Headquarters in New York, extending its powerful message to a global audience.
March 2025
Museum of Fine Arts (MOFA)
Florida State University, Tallahassee
“Homo Sargassum” International Symposium
In March 2025, the three-day symposium marking the closing of the Homo Sargassum exhibition was held at FSU’s Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA). Curated by the Tout-Monde Art Institute in collaboration with the Winthrop-King Institute, the program featured a dynamic and innovative mix of events. It brought together an inspiring range of scholars, curators, artists, and students from across the Caribbean, and remains one of the highlights of my time at FSU. In addition to academic papers, the symposium showcased a variety of formats, including presentations by Ph.D. students who explored how their research intersected with the themes and artworks on display.
Exploring the theme of self-transformation, central to my dissertation, I drew connections between Russell Watson’s collages of human and marine life forms, Ronald Cyrille’s amphibious, more-than-human creatures, and Joiri Minaya’s bodies completely enveloped in floral patterns, which both contrasted with and blended into the tropical backgrounds of her artwork. I also briefly presented a chapter from my dissertation, which was informed by the conceptual framework proposed by invited guest Valérie Loichot in her groundbreaking Water Graves: The Art of the Unritual in the Greater Caribbean (2020).
The symposium featured performances, readings, and other creative expressions. One of the most powerful moments was a tribute to Haiti and its art by visual artist Édouard Duval-Carrié. Reflecting on the history of the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince and his own commitment to Haiti as an artist, he moved the entire audience with his words.
Another beautiful moment was a bilingual poetry reading: performance artist Louisa Marajo read her poem in French, followed by my reading of Martin Munro’s English translation. The poem’s striking language, while celebratory in tone, carried an underlying warning - about looming environmental catastrophes and the persistent shadows of colonial legacies. Here is the opening of the text:
Let's light the FIRE for this aperitif, upside down
under this tangy heat,
Let's light the FIRE for this aperitif, facing the Sea.
Let's light the FIRE
And enjoy these little blue Sargassum Accras,
full of Chlordecone and Cobalt
recharging the batteries of our CATASTROPHE
The text resonated deeply, urging us to confront not only environmental crises but also the ongoing impact of historical and colonial wounds. Its urgency and complexity sparked reflection among all who experienced it.
Link to the symposium’s program: HOMO SARGASSUM International Symposium | Winthrop-King Institute
Inviting Gisèle Pineau and Naomi Fontaine for a Writers in Residence Week at FSU
In March 2024, I co-organized a “Writers in Residence” week at Florida State University, bringing novelists Gisèle Pineau and Naomi Fontaine to engage with both students and academics.
Gisèle Pineau, whose warmth and generosity left a lasting impression on all who interacted with her, led an immersive three-day writing workshop centered on the theme of exile. Throughout the workshop, participants were invited to write and share their work, receiving invaluable guidance and writing tips from Pineau herself. The intimate, supportive atmosphere she fostered allowed for deep and meaningful connections among the participants, making the experience both personal and transformative.
The week, sponsored by the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, culminated in a symposium that brought together scholars from around the world, focused on the literary contributions of our two esteemed guests.
Link to the event’s program: Writers in Residence: Naomi Fontaine and Gisèle Pineau | Winthrop-King Institute
Hosting Gisèle Pineau and Tessa Mars at FSU
In March 2023, I had the privilege of co-organizing the symposium “Women’s Words: Caribbean Worlds” at the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University. This event brought together two extraordinary voices: acclaimed writer Gisèle Pineau and visual artist Tessa Mars.
My goal was to explore the transnational and diasporic intersections within their works across their distinct artistic mediums. In her keynote, Pineau delivered a powerful autobiographical talk, reflecting on her dual roles as both a writer and a psychiatric nurse in Guadeloupe, and how each has shaped and informed the other.
Tessa Mars shared her own diasporic journey, focusing on her experience living and working in the Netherlands. She also performed a moving reading of her unpublished text "I Eat the Land", which blends reflections on her art practice with a deep exploration of her relationship to land, home, and the narratives imposed by others. Later that year, Mars published a revised version of her talk in Small Axe as EAT THE LAND | Small Axe Project: EAT THE LAND | Small Axe Project
Link to the event’s program: Women's Words: Caribbean Worlds | Winthrop-King Institute
Interview with photographer Ibrahima Thiam
My encounter with the Senegalese photographer Ibrahima Thiam was a significant moment in my research journey. During his visit to Florida State University in 2022, I had the opportunity to speak with him about his life path and photographic practice. In our conversation, we discussed his work focused on the spirits of the Senegal River - those invisible figures, mythical presences inhabiting the banks, shores, and riverbed. For Thiam, the river becomes both a place of memory, a threshold between worlds, and a space for reactivating ancestral imaginations. Through his photographs, often staged and inspired by oral stories, he reconstructs a landscape inhabited by the invisible.
Watch the interview in French: Ibrahima Thiam - 3rd Global Africas: Senegal: Past and/as Present
March 2024
Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French & Francophone Studies
Florida State University, Tallahassee
March 2023
Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French & Francophone Studies
Florida State University, Tallahassee
March 2022
Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French & Francophone Studies
Florida State University, Tallahassee