Deborah Jenson, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Romance Studies, Co-director of Haiti Humanities Laboratory, Co-director of Neurohumanities Research Group, 19th Century French and Caribbean Studies

My most recent books are a literary history of the Haitian Revolution, called "Beyond the Slave Narrative" (2011, paperback Feb. 2012) and a volume on the global legacies of psychoanalysis: "Unconscious Dominions" (with Anderson and Keller, 2011). Earlier work includes "Trauma and Its Representations," "Sarah (A Colonial Novella" (with Kadish) and "The Haiti Issue" of Yale French Studies. I am writing a book of essays, "Mimesis from Marx to Mirror Neurons." Current collaborative book projects include a biography of Dessalines, a volume of the letters of Toussaint Louverture, and an edition of an 18th century Creole opera. At Duke I co-direct (with Laurent Dubois) the FHI Haiti Humanities Laboratory. I also serve as as a Global Health faculty affiliate and Co-Convener of the DIBS/FHI Neurohumanities Research Group. In the summer I direct Duke in Paris.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	112 Languages Building
Office Phone:	(919) 660-3122
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2013):

• FRENCH 490-1.01, TOPICS LIT AND NEUROSCIENCE Synopsis

  TBA, TuTh 03:05 PM-04:20 PM

  (also cross-listed as NEUROSCI 290-1.01)

Office Hours:

Office hours by appointment; please email deborah.jenson@duke.edu.

Education:

PhD

Harvard University

1994

Research Interests: French and Haitian Studies; Creole/Kreyòl; Global Health; "Neurohumanities"

Current projects: Empathy and cognition, Dessalines, PTSD in post-earthquake Leogane, Creole Rousseau, Cholera in the 19th century Caribbean

I take the broad mandate of the humanist very seriously: my research is diverse. In the field of neuroscience and the humanities, my work includes an article on mirror neurons and literary bio-mimesis with neuropsychiatrist Marco Iacoboni, a course called "Flaubert's Brain: Neurohumanities," and several projects related to traumatic stress, cognition, and culture. In the arena of Global Health and the History of Medicine, we are working with Haiti Lab students on topics ranging from the history of cholera in Haiti and the Caribbean (see our article and digital map in Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2011) to the history of anthropological psychiatry in Haiti, to post-disaster mental health. I am also researching slaves' African ethnic identities in 18th century Saint-Domingue through study of ads for runaway slaves.

Duties:

Director of Undergraduate Studies, Romance Studies; Faculty Affiliate, Global Health; Co-Director, FHI Haiti Lab; Director, Duke in Paris Summer Program; Co-Convener, DIBS/FHI Neurohumanities Research Group

Current Ph.D. Students  

• Ombeline Formey de Saint Louvent  
• Joyce Wu  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Deborah Jenson, Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (2011; paperback forthcoming Feb. 2012), pp. 322, Liverpool University Press
2. Deborah Jenson (with Warwick Anderson and Richard E. Keller), Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties (2011), pp. 328, Duke University Press
3. Deborah Jenson, Marco Iacoboni, Literary Biomimesis: Mirror Neurons and the Ontological Priority of Representation, California Italian Studies (2011) [3sc3j6dj]
4. D. Jenson, V. Szabo, and the Haiti Lab Student Research Team, Cholera in Haiti and Other Caribbean Regions, 19th Century, Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 17 no. 11 (November, 2011), pp. 6, Centers for Disease Control [eid1711.110958]
5. Deborah Jenson, Kidnapped narratives: Mobility without Autonomy and the Nation/Novel Analogy, in A Companion to Comparative Literature, edited by Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas (2011), Blackwell Press
6. Deborah Jenson, The Common Without Copies, the International Without Cosmopolitanism: Marx Against the Romanticism of Likeness, Rethinking Marxism, vol. 22 no. 3 (2010), pp. 420-433
7. Deborah Jenson, Hegel and Dessalines: Philosophy and the African Diaspora, New West Indian Guide, vol. 84 no. 3 & 4 (2010), pp. 4-9
8. Deborah Jenson, Dessalines's American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence, The Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. Vol. 15 no. No. 1 and 2 (2010), pp. 72-102  [abs]
9. Deborah Jenson, The Writing of Disaster in Haiti: Signifying Cataclysm from Slave Revolution to Earth Quake, in Haiti Rising, edited by Martin Munro (2010), pp. 103-112, Liverpool University Press [publication.asp]
10. Deborah Jenson and Doris Kadish, Sarah, An English Translation (2008), MLA Editions
11. Deborah Jenson, Francophone World Literature (Littérature-monde) Cosmopolitanism, and Decadence: ‘Citizen of the World’ without the Citizen?, in Transnational French Studies: Postcolonialism and Littérature-monde, edited by Alec Hargreaves (2010), pp. 15-35, Liverpool University Press [publication.asp]
12. Deborah Jenson, Toussaint Louverture, Spin Doctor? Launching the Haitian Revolution in the French Media, in Tree of Liberty: Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (2008), pp. 41-62, University of Virginia Press
13. Deborah Jenson, Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A ‘French’ Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism, edited by Alec Hargreaves and Jean-Marc Mourra, International Journal of Francophone Studies, vol. 10 no. 3 (2007), pp. 329-342 [ijfs.10.3.329_1]
14. Deborah Jenson, Fétichisme de la marchandise: la poésie des courtisanes noires ou de couleur à Saint-Domingue, in Relire l’histoire et la littérature haïtiennes, edited by Christiane Ndiaye (2007), pp. 27-56, Presses nationales d'Haïti
15. Deborah Jenson, Myth, History, and Witnessing in Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s Caribbean Poetics, edited by Adrianna Paliyenko, L'Esprit Créateur, vol. 47 no. 4 (2007), pp. 329-343 [html]
16. Deborah Jenson, The Haiti Issue, Yale French Studies, vol. 107 (2005)
17. Deborah Jenson, Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (2001), pp. 294, Johns Hopkins UP

Conferences Organized

• Selection Committee, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Conference, December 2012  
• "'Old' Worlds, 'New' Worlds, Future Worlds" Romance Studies Undergraduate Research Conference, Orgaanizer, March, 2012  
• Selection Committee, NIneteenth-Century French Studies Conference, 2011  
• Haiti Lab Workshop, "Unveiling the Colonial System": The Baron de Vastey and the Henry Christophe Regime, Co-Organizer, December, 2011  
• PFIRST Workshop, "Discourses of Trauma in Haiti" (Co-Organizer), November, 2011  
• States of Freedom, Freedom of States, Co-Organizer (with Michaeline Crichlow (Duke, Sociology and AAAS, Patricia Northover (UWI, SALISES), Matthew Smith (UWI, History, Faculty of the Human, June 18-19, 2010