Assistant Professor of French and African Studies

Unsettled Bodies investigates how contemporary Black artists and authors living in France envision belonging to a national, diasporic, and planetary community. Analyzing works that stage the materiality of human bodies in various states—as corpses, as exhibit specimens, as heterogeneous assemblages, as environmental detritus—this research reveals that a key part of these artists’ and authors’ theorization of Afro-diasporic belonging relies on rethinking embodiment and agency.