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Deborah Jenson, Professor, Romance Studies and French Studies

Deborah Jenson
Office Location:  205 Language Center
Office Phone:  (919) 660-3122
Email Address:  send me a message

Teaching (Fall 2012):

  • French 481d.001, Flaubert's brain neurohumaniti Synopsis
    Languages 305, M 03:05 PM-04:20 PM
    (also cross-listed as LIT 246D.001, NEUROSCI 241D.001)
  • French 481d.02d, Flaubert's brain neurohumaniti Synopsis
    Languages 208, W 03:05 PM-04:20 PM
    (also cross-listed as LIT 246D.02D, NEUROSCI 241D.02D)
  • Romst 490s.02, Topics romance studies Synopsis
    Perkins 2-065, Th 04:40 PM-07:10 PM
    (also cross-listed as ARTSVIS 490S.01, LATAMER 490S.02)
  • Creole 701.01, Elementary creole i Synopsis
    Languages 305, MF 08:30 AM-09:30 AM; Languages 305, TuTh 08:30 AM-09:45 AM
Office Hours:

By appointment
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.

Representative Publications   (More Publications)
  1. Deborah Jenson. Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution.  Liverpool University Press, 2011; paperback forthcoming Feb. 2012: 322.
  2. Deborah Jenson (with Warwick Anderson and Richard E. Keller). Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties. Duke University Press, 2011: 328.
  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 17:11 (November, November, 2011): 6. [eid1711.110958]
  5. Deborah Jenson. "Kidnapped narratives: Mobility without Autonomy and the Nation/Novel Analogy." A Companion to Comparative Literature  (2011).
  6. Deborah Jenson. "The Common Without Copies, the International Without Cosmopolitanism: Marx Against the Romanticism of Likeness." Rethinking Marxism 22:3 (2010): 420-433.
  7. Deborah Jenson. "Hegel and Dessalines: Philosophy and the African Diaspora." New West Indian Guide 84:3 & 4 (2010): 4-9.
  8. Deborah Jenson. "Dessalines's American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence." The Journal of Haitian Studies Vol. 15:No. 1 and 2 (2010): 72-102.  [abs]
  9. Deborah Jenson. "The Writing of Disaster in Haiti: Signifying Cataclysm from Slave Revolution to Earth Quake." Haiti Rising  (2010): 103-112. [publication.asp]
  10. Deborah Jenson and Doris Kadish. Sarah, An English Translation. MLA Editions, 2008.
  11. Deborah Jenson. "Francophone World Literature (Littérature-monde) Cosmopolitanism, and Decadence: ‘Citizen of the World’ without the Citizen?." Transnational French Studies: Postcolonialism and Littérature-monde  (2010): 15-35. [publication.asp]
  12. Deborah Jenson. "Toussaint Louverture, Spin Doctor? Launching the Haitian Revolution in the French Media." Tree of Liberty: Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World  (2008): 41-62.
  13. Deborah Jenson. "Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A ‘French’ Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism." International Journal of Francophone Studies 10:3 (2007): 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." Relire l’histoire et la littérature haïtiennes  (2007): 27-56.
  15. Deborah Jenson. "Myth, History, and Witnessing in Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s Caribbean Poetics." L'Esprit Créateur 47:4 (2007): 329-343. [html]
  16. Deborah Jenson, The Haiti Issue. Yale French Studies 107 (2005).
  17. Deborah Jenson. Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France.  Johns Hopkins UP, 2001: 294.
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