Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Bénédicte Boisseron was born in France of a French mother and a French Caribbean father (Guadeloupe) and is now living in America as a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) at The University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Her interdisciplinary research brings into conversation Caribbean Studies, Global Black Studies, and Environmental Humanities through a literary, historical and cultural lens. Her first book, Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora (University Press of Florida, 2014) received the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association and the Barbara Christian Prize for Best Book in the Humanities from the Caribbean Studies Association (Honorable Mention). Her second book, Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (Columbia University Press, 2018) is one of the first book-length studies on the intersection between Black life and animal rights in the history and cultures of the Americas and the Black Atlantic. Her current book project titled The Hand That Feeds, which has been supported by a 2022-23 Guggenheim fellowship, is part memoir and part reflection on the power of food and taste in a French, Caribbean, and American context. She is also at work on a short book (under contract with Duke University Press) about the everyday practice of living with dogs from an international perspective. She is teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in her fields of expertise and has traveled extensively for her research and for pleasure.