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Jean Jonassaint

Jean Jonassaint

Jean Jonassaint

Professor, French and Francophone Studies Graduate Advisor

CONTACT

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
333 HB Crouse Hall
Email: jjonassa@syr.edu
Office: 315.443.5382

PROGRAM AFFILIATIONS

French and Francophone Studies
French Language, Literature, and Culture

Degrees

  • Ph.D., French Studies, Université de Montréal (1989)
  • M.A., Literary Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal (1981)
  • B.A., Literary Studies & Communication, Université du Québec à Montréal (1977)

Courses Taught

  • French 300 French Creative Workshop
  • French 300 Francophone World 1
  • French 300 Francophone World 2
  • French 317 Business French
  • French 401 Translation/Traduction
  • French 400/600 Mother Figures, Women's Stories
  • French 400/ 600 Frankétienne: A Multitalented Caribbean Writer
  • French 400/ 600 The Theatre of Aimé Césaire
  • French 400/600 The Caribbean according Condé: autofiction or autobiography?
  • French 417/ 617 “Impressions d’Afrique”: Caribbean Gazes
  • French 419/ 619 Sembène Ousmane & the African Cinema
Research and Teaching Interests

Professor Jonassaint broad field of research is Francophone Studies, which cover a huge area of literary productions primarily in French, from eighteenth-century Europe and the Americas to twenty-first-century Africa or Asia. Mainly, his research is on narratives by Caribbean, Quebec and African writers or transnational writers in France and Quebec. On the other hand, he is more and more interested in a practical epistemology, which to some extent implies an ethics of criticism and theory. His growing interest in the questioning of traditional approaches to Francophone or Caribbean literatures leads him more recently to critical and genetic edition of texts, as demonstrated by his 90-page book chapter “Matériaux pour une édition critique” (2008) and his article on the genesis of Manheim’s English translation of La Tragédie du Roi Christophe by Aimé Césaire in the journal Présence Africaine (2014). Currently, he is completing a book on Caribbean literature and its reception, Contre Vulgate (des lieux dits Caraïbes), under contract with Presses de l’Université Laval (Québec); he is also working on a genetic edition of Dézafi and Les Affres d’un défi by Frankétienne in a single volume to be published in the series “Planète libre” of CNRS editions (Paris).

Books
Career
  • Professor, French and Francophone Studies, Syracuse University, 2015-
  • Associate Professor, French and Francophone Studies, Syracuse University, 2005-2015
  • Assistant Professor, French and Francophone Studies, Duke University, 1996-2005
  • Senior Lecturer, Literary Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1979-1996
  • Lecturer, Literary Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1978-1979
  • Cultural Adviser of the City of Montréal for publishing, communication, and intercultural Affairs, 1988-1995
Edited Journals

Manuscrits francophones du Sud : un état des lieux. Continents Manuscrits 1 (2014) online @ <http://coma.revues.org/196> [co-editor: Claire Riffard].

Special issue on Frankétienne, Journal of Haitian Studies 14.1 (2008), 247 pages <http://research.ucsb.edu/cbs/publications/johs/johs1401.html>.

L’Amérique entre les langues [co-editor Lise Gauvin], Études françaises 28.2-3 (1992-1993), 186 pages <http://www.erudit.org/revue/etudfr/1992/v28/n2-3/index.html>.

Nouvelles brésiliennes [anthology, co-editors F. Aguiar and J. García Méndez]. Dérives 37-38-39 (1983), 216 pages.

Book Chapters

Édition génétique de Dézafi et Les Affres d’un défi de Frankétienne. Rencontres scientifiques 2013-2014 de l’IEA (Nantes: IEA, 2014), 64-72.

Transnationalité / Postnationalité : le défi des études franco-caraïbéennes, in Laurence Pourchez ed. Créolité, créolisation : regards croisés (Paris : Éditions des Archives contemporaines, 2013), 97-122.

Pour un projet de sauvegarde et d’édition critique d’œuvres haïtiennes, in Marc Cheymol ed. Littératures au Sud. Paris : Agence universitaire de la Francophonie/ Éditions des Archives contemporaines, 2009, 197-207 (available online at <http://www.llcd.auf.org/IMG/pdf/LitteraturesDuSud_BAT.pdf>).

Toward New Paradigms in Caribbean Studies: The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on our Literatures, in Doris Garraway ed., Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, 200-222.

Pour de nouveaux paradigmes: Haïti et nos humanités, in Présences haïtiennes (eds. by Christiane Achour et al.). Cergy: Centre de Recherche Textes et Francophonies, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, 2007, 421-451.

For a Caribbean Intertext: On Some Readings of Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove, in French Civilization and Its Discontents: Nationalism, Colonialism, Race (ed. by G. van den Abbeele and T. Stovall). Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003, 147-171. [Resived and enlarged English version of “Sur des lectures de Traversée de la Mangrove de Condé,” Cahiers Francophones d’Europe Centre-Orientale 10 (2000): 419-441.]

Haitian Literature in the United States, 1948-1986, in American Babel: Literatures of the United States from Abnaki to Zuni (ed. by Marc Shell). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 431-449. [Resived English version of “Des Productions littéraires haïtiennes aux États-Unis (1948-1986),” Journal of Haitian Studies 5-6 (1999-2000): 4-19.]

The Crossing of American Languages in Sainte dérive des cochons, in Unforeseeable Americas: Questioning Cultural Hybridity in the Americas (ed. by Rita de Grandis and Zilá Bernd). Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, Critical Studies vol. 13, 2000, 143-157.

Migration et études littéraires. Essai de théorisation d’un problème ancien aux contours nouveaux, in Literary Pluralities (ed. by Christl Verduyn). Peterborough: Broadview Press/Journal of Canadian Studies, 1998, 64-74 [Formerly published in Journal of Canadian Studies 31.3 (1996): 9-20].

La Traversée des langues américaines dans Sainte dérive des cochons de J.-C. Charles, in Poétiques et Imaginaires. Francopolyphonie littéraire des Amériques (edited by Pierre Laurette and Hans-George Ruprecht). Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995, 255-265.

L’Édition québécoise actuelle, portrait(s), in Littérature et institutions au Québec et en Belgique francophone (ed. by L. Gauvin and J.-M. Klinkenberg). Bruxelles and Montréal: Labor and Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1985, 137-160.

Journal Articles

Césaire et Haïti : des apports à évaluer. Francophonies d’Amérique 36 ([2013] 2015): [135]-165.

Le labyrinthe des ayants droit. Continents manuscrits 3 (2014), online @ <http://coma.revues.org/406>.

Genèse et impact d’une traduction anglaise des Christophe de Césaire. Présence Africaine 189 (2014): 219-241.

Le cinéma de Sembène Ousmane, une (double) contre-ethnographie. Éthnologies 31.2 (2010): 241-286 <http://www.erudit.org/revue/ethno/2010/v31/n2/039372ar.pdf>.

Transnationalism, Multilingualism and Literature: the Challenge of Caribbean Studies. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 40.1 (2007): 21-34.

Critique haïtienne de la créolité antillaise. Interculturel Francophonies 8 (2005): 93-120.

De la complexité caraïbéenne: notes sur une impasse théorique. Francofonia 49 (2005): 37-58.

Beyond Painting or Writing: Frankétienne’s Poetic Quest. Research in African Literatures 35.2 (2004): 141-156.

Sur un champ miné de bonnes intentions: Francophone Postcolonial Studies. Francophone Postcolonial Studies 1.2 (2003): 83-93.

Literatures in the Francophone Caribbean, in French and Francophone: The Challenge of Expanding Horizons (co-edited by F. Laroussi and C. Miller). Yale French Studies 103 (2003): 55-63.

Tragic Narratives: the Novels of Haitian Tradition. Callaloo 26.1 (2003): 203-218.

Des récits haïtiens au Québec (1937-1995). Repères pour une histoire, Neue Romania 18 (1997): 81-104.

De l’apport migratoire à la littérature québécoise. La Licorne 27 (1993): 391-400.

Encyclopedia and Dictionary Entries

Haitian Renaissance, in Encyclopedia of African Thought, edited by Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo. New York : Oxford UP, 2010, 423-426.

Tragédie, in Dictionnaire de la mort edited by Philippe di Folco. Paris : Éditions Larousse, 2010, 1040-1041.

Vaudou, in Dictionnaire de la mort edited by Philippe di Folco. Paris : Éditions Larousse, 2010, 1067-1068.

Zombi et mort-vivant (with Thomas Schlesser), in Dictionnaire de la mort edited by Philippe di Folco. Paris : Éditions Larousse, 2010, 1104-1105.

Depestre, René, in Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature vol. 1, Gaëtan Brulotte and John Phillips eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2006, 336-339.

Laferrière, Dany, in Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature vol. 2, Gaëtan Brulotte and John Phillips eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2006, 758-761.

Étienne, Franck, in France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, History vol. 2, Bill Marshall ed. Oxford and Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005, 418-420.

Viatte, Auguste, in France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, History vol. 3, Bill Marshall ed. Oxford and Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005, 1188-1189.

Maximilien Laroche, Le Miracle et la Métamorphose. Essai sur les littératures d’Haïti et du Québec, in Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires du Québec V. 1970-1975, Maurice Lemire et al. eds. Montréal: Fides, 1987, 552-553.

Articles on Web Sites

A Very Historic Moment in Caribbean Studies: Boisrond-Tonnerre’s Mémoires. Har-vard Houghton Library Blog <https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/houghton/2013/05/27/a-very-historic-moment-in-caribbean-studies-boisrond-tonnerres-memoires-1804-online/>.

Sur un champ miné de bonnes intentions: Francophone Postcolonial Studies (réponse à Sam Haigh) [a revised version of the 2003 article, “Sur un champ miné de bonnes in­tentions: Francophone Postcolonial Studies”]: <http://mondesfrancophones.com/­debats/francophonies-et-theories/sur-un-champ-mine-de-bonnes-intentions-francophone-postcolonial-studies-reponse-a-sam-haigh/>.

Un portrait composite [a revised version of the 1987 article, Frankétienne, écrivain haïtien]: <http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/franketienne_portrait.html>.

La Traversée des langues américaines dans Sainte dérive des cochons de J.-C. Charles [a revised and enlarged version of the 1995 original French article]: <http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/charles_jonassaint.html>.

Review Essays and Reviews

Mémoires du général Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint Louverture. Daniel Desormeaux (ed.). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011. 237 pp. (Paper € 29.00). NWIG 88-3&4 (2014), 331-333 <http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/22134360-08803019>.

Écrits d’Haiti: perspectives sur la littérature haïtienne contemporaine (1986-2006), Nadève Ménard (ed.). Paris: Karthala, 2011. 486 pp. NWIG 87-3&4 (2013): 236-238 <http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/22134360-12340045;jsessionid=2weso2afk5ff.x-brill-live-02>.

Review of The Cambridge Introduction to Francophone Literature by Patrick Corcoran. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Symposium:A Quarterly Journal In Modern Literatures 64.1 (2010): 66- 68.

Actualités littéraires d’Afrique et de la Caraïbe, Nouvelles Études Francophones 23.1 (2008): 212-215.

Caché, in Syracuse International Film Festival 2007: Commemorative Program Book (Syracuse: Point of Contact, 2007), 38.

Wrestling Grounds, in Syracuse International Film Festival 2007: Commemorative Program Book (Syracuse: Point of Contact, 2007), 75.

Actualités littéraires de l’Afrique subsaharienne. Nouvelles Études Francophones 22.1 (2007): 189-190.

Actualités littéraires des Caraïbes. Nouvelles Études Francophones 22.1 (2007): 195-198.

Œuvres complètes de Jacques Roumain. Ed. Léon-François Hoffman. Research in African Literatures 36.3 (2005): 153-154.

[and Patricia Célérier] Actualités littéraires de l’Afrique et des Antilles. Nouvelles Études Francophones 20.1 (2005): 202-204.

Yambo Ouologuem. Nouvelles Études Francophones 19.2 (2004): 264-268.

[and Jean Levasseur]. Actualités littéraires de l’Afrique et des Antilles. Nouvelles Études Francophones 19.2 (2004): 240-242.

Actualités littéraires d’Haïti. Nouvelles Études Francophones 19.2 (2004): 243-247.