Donette Francis is co-director for the Center for Global Black Studies and past director the American Studies Program at the University of Miami. An Associate Professor of English and founding member of the Hemispheric Caribbean Studies Collective, her research and writing investigate place, aesthetics and cultural politics in the African Diaspora. Professor Francis is the author of Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature and has edited several special journal issues: “Looking for Black Miami: Black Intellectual and Artistic Formations,” Anthurium, (Spring 2020) “Interim Time: Recasting the Revolutionary Jamaican 1970s.” Small Axe (March 2019); “Radical Skepticisms: The Long Jamaican 1960s.” Small Axe (July 2017). She is currently working on two book projects: Illegibilities: Caribbean Cosmopolitanisms and the Problem of Form, an intellectual history of the Anglophone Caribbean’s transnational literary culture, 1940-1970; and Creole Miami: Black Arts in the Magic City, a sociocultural history of black arts practice in Miami from 1980s to present. Professor Francis is a Research Associate with The Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Dr. Francis has received research grants and fellowships from The Clark Art Institute, The Mellon and Ford Foundations, The Advanced Research Collaborative Fellowship, City University of New York and Center for the Humanities, University of Miami. She received her PhD. in American Studies from New York University and MA in English from Howard University.
Education
| 2001 | Ph.D. , New York University |
Caribbean literary and intellectual histories, American immigrant literatures, African diaspora literary studies, globalization and transnational feminist studies, and theories of sexuality and citizenship
Professional Experience
| - | Member of Editorial Board, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature and the Trotter Review |
| - | Assistant and Associate Professor, Binghamton University |
| - | Lecturer, New York University |
Honors & Acknowledgements
Ford Foundation Summer Fellowships
Dr. Nuala G. Drescher Award
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Faculty Fellowship at Binghamton University
Caribbean literary and intellectual histories, American immigrant literatures, African diaspora literary studies, globalization and transnational feminist studies, and theories of sexuality and citizenship
Research Projects
Special Issue Journal Editor:
Guest Editor, “The Jamaican 1970s” Small Axe 23, no. 1 (March 2019).
Co-Editor with David Scott, “The Jamaican 1960s” Small Axe Small Axe 21, no. 3 (November. 2017).
Editor, “Intellectual Formations: Locating a Caribbean Intellectual Tradition,” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, Fall 2013.
Co-editor with Belinda Edmondson. “American Studies: the Caribbean Edition,” Journal of Transnational American Studies, 5.1 (Summer 2013).
Book Reviews
The Gymnast and Other Stories (Jacqueline Bishop) Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 50:1 (2017) 131-133.
Not for Every Day Use: A Memoir (Elizabeth Nunez) Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 48:2 (2015)160-281-282.
This Strange Land (Shara McCullum) Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 46:1 (2013)160-161.
“The Boundaries of a Space In Between,” (Review of Elizabeth Nunez’ Boundaries), SX Salon 9 (May 2012). http://smallaxe.net/wordpress3/discussions/2012/05/28/the-boundaries-of-a-space-in-between/
“Precarious Gaps: Refugees and the Limits of Diaspora” (Review of April Shemak’s Asylum Speakers), Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, 9.1 (2012) Article 4. http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol9/iss1/4
Review of Kezia Page’s Transnational Negotiations in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction. Journal of West Indian Literature, Volume 20.1 (March 2012). “Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting.” Journal of West Indian Literature, Vol. 17.1 (November 2008): 76-79.
Publications
Donette Francis "Juxtaposing Creoles: Miami in the Plays of Tarell Alvin McCraney" Tarell McCraney Anthology , Isaiah Wooden, etal eds, (Northwestern University Press. forthcoming 2020).
Donette Francis "Interim Time: Recasting the Revolutionary Jamaican 1970s" Small Axe 52-61, 23:1, (2019).
Donette Francis "The Last Colonial: Becoming Stuart Hall" Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 22-28., Volume 25, Issue 1: Symposium: Stuart Hall’s Familiar Stranger: A life between two islands, (2018).
Donette Francis "Diaspora Art in the Creole City" The International Review of African American Art 33-41., 28.2, (2018).
Donette Francis "‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’ in the Caribbean Literary Imagination" Black Art, Politics, and Aesthetics in 1960s African American Literature and Culture in Transition: The 1960s Shelly Eversley, Ed. (Cambridge UP. forthcoming).
Donette Francis "Radical Skepticisms: Literature of the Long Jamaican 1960s" Small Axe 48-62.21, no. 3 (2017).
Donette Francis "oyce Gladwell’s Autobiographical Challenge to the Windrush Generation" Beyond Windrush: Rethinking Postwar Anglophone Caribbean Literature Leah Rosenberg and Dillon, eds. (University of Mississippi Press. 2015).
Donette Francis "'Transcendental Cosmopolitanism:' Orlando Patterson and the Novel 1960s" Journal of Transnational American Studies, Special Issue “American Studies: the Caribbean Edition, 5.1 (2013).
Donette Francis "Sexwork, Secrets and Depression in Angie Cruz’s Soledad" Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Circum-Caribbean 53-71. (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press. 2011).
Donette Francis "Strategies of Caribbean Literary Feminisms." The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature 332-343. (Oxon,, UK. Routledge UP. 2011).
Donette Francis Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature (Palgrave . 2010).
Donette Francis "The Last Stitch: A Praise Song to My Mother Who Mothered Me" Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 160-167.32: 14.2 (2010).
Donette Francis "Traveling Miles: Jazz in the Making of a West Indian Intellectual" Caribbean Culture: Essays in Honour of Kamau Brathwaite 142-151. (Kingston,, JA. University of the West Indies Press. 2007).
Donette Francis "New Caribbean North American Writers." Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History 405-407. (Farmington Hills,, MI, Macmillan Reference USA. 2005).
Donette Francis "Uncovered Stories: Politicizing Sexual Histories in Third Wave Caribbean Women’s Writings." Black Renaissance/ Renaissance Noire 61-81.6.1, (2004).
Donette Francis "Silences Too Horrific to Disturb”: Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory" Research in African Literatures 75-90. (2004).
Donette Francis "Paule Marshall: New Accents on Immigrant America" The Black Scholar 20-25.Vol. 30.2, (2000).
Donette Francis "Unsilencing the Past in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones" Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 168-175.5, (1999).
