Deborah Jenson, Professor Emeritus

My career began with graduate training under Hélène Cixous (Paris VIII) and Barbara E. Johnson (Harvard University), and segued to faculty roles at the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque (1995-2002), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002-2008), and Duke University (2008-2025; Emerita, 2026-). I am an interdisciplinary scholar of French and Caribbean Literature and Culture, with particular interest in the “long 19^th century” in France and Haiti, cognitive literary studies, health humanities, and global south philosophy. Monographs, edited volumes, and translations include: Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (2011); Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (2001); Poetry of Haitian Independence (2015, with D. Kadish and N. Shapiro); Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignty (2011, with W. Anderson and R. Keller); Sarah, A Colonial Novella (2008, with D. Kadish); and "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays by Hélène Cixous (1991). Edited journal issues include The EcoBrain: Ecologies of Cognition and Cognitive Ecologies in Ecokritike (2025, with Cate Reilly, Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, and Hugh Roberts); Representation in Neusocience and Humanities in Frontiers Integrative Neuroscience and Psychology (2022, with Marco Iacoboni and Len White); States of Freedom, Freedom of States in The Global South (2012, with Michaeline Crichlow and Patricia Northover); The Haiti Issue: 1804 and Nineteenth-Century French Studies in Yale French Studies (2005). Duke University provided the opportunity for me not only to collaborate with others around humanities labs (the “Haiti Lab,” 2010-2013, and the “Health Humanities Lab”, 2016-2020), but to serve as a Research Professor of Global Health at the Duke Institute for Global Health, and an affiliate of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, where I co-directed the Neurohumanities Research Group, Duke Neurohumanities in Paris, and the Brain and Society theme of Bass Connections. In addition to my articles in humanities journals and edited volumes, I have published collaborative work in scientific venues including The American Psychologist (2023), Epilepsy and Behavior (2020), and Emerging Infectious Diseases (2011). My administrative roles at Duke included directing the Franklin Humanities Institute (2015-2017)and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2012-2014). Teaching opportunities have built on the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of my research, with courses including “Flaubert’s Brain: Neurohumanities,” “Haiti to New Orleans,” "Pandemic Humanities: Reimagining Health and Medicine in Romance Studies," “Storytelling in Medicine and Health,” “Trauma and Global Health," "Mimesis in Theory and Practice," and "Global Humanities in French.” Recent courses have built on my interests in philosophy, and include "Sylvia Wynter and Caribbean Philosophy," and co-taught courses with Felwine Sarr (“African Philosophy” and “Africana Philosophy in French”). 

As I embark on the Emeritus phase of my Duke faculty career, I am preparing, with John Gartrell, Meg Brown, and two of our Romance Studies graduate students, an exhibit and symposium for the opening of the Sylvia Wynter archives at Duke in early March2026, and I am working on the translation of a novel by the award-winning Haitian author Yanick Lahens. 

Contact Info:

Office Location:	205 Language Center, Box 90257, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address:
Web Page:	https://duke.box.com/s/jmxpoulusnqm0bttvbu1vdbmmie0ddtk

Office Hours:

I am available by appointment on Thursdays from noon to 1:30 in 112 Languages, or by other arrangement.

Education:

Ph.D.	Harvard University	1994
M.A.	University of Paris (France)	1985
B.A.	Bowdoin College	1983

Specialties:

French Studies
Caribbean Studies

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

Current projects: Haitian Ethnopsychiatry, Trauma and Global Mental Health, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Flaubert and Epilepsy, Literary Representations of the Brain

I take the broad mandate of the humanist very seriously. The overlapping problems of representation and imitation in "mimesis" are at the heart of my research and teaching, but the contexts in which I explore them are diverse. Trauma, as crisis in the continuity of internal representations of the real, reveals the complexity of mimetic experience. Historical transitions to new forms of representation, such as the adoption of the political proclamation by former slaves in the Haitian revolution, teach us to see literary conventions, or literacy itself, with new eyes. Neuroscientific exploration of "mirror neurons" raises the question of whether we form cognitive imitations of others' experience simply by observing their motor actions. In summary, my linguistic, literary, and historiographical skills can be directed to French literature, Haitian studies, trauma and global mental health, or "neurohumanities."

Keywords:

Caribbean Region • Cholera • Haiti • History, 19th Century • Humans • Poetry

Duties:

Secondary Appointment, Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI) Graduate Faculty, Women's Studies Faculty Affiliate, the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS) Co-Director, Haiti Lab Co-Director, Brain & Society, Bass Connections Co-Director, Duke Neurohumanities in Paris Co-Convener, Neurohumanities Research Group

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

1. Jenson, D, Living by Metaphor in the Haitian Revolution: Tigers and Cognitive Theory, edited by Gaffield, J (2016), University of Virginia Press
2. Kadish, DY; Jenson, D, Poetry of Haitian independence (May, 2015), pp. 1-356, Yale University Press (translated by Shapiro, N.) [ref=sr_1_1]  [abs]
3. Jenson, D; Iacoboni, M, Literary Biomimesis: Mirror Neurons and the Ontological Priority of Representation, California Italian Studies (2011) [3sc3j6dj]
4. Jenson, D; Szabo, V; Duke FHI Haiti Humanities Laboratory Student Research Team, Cholera in Haiti and other Caribbean regions, 19th century., Emerging infectious diseases, vol. 17 no. 11 (November, 2011), pp. 2130-2135, Centers for Disease Control [22099117], [doi]  [abs]
5. Deborah Jenson, Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (2011; paperback 2012), pp. 322, Liverpool University Press
6. Jenson, D, Kidnapped Narratives: Mobility without Autonomy and the Nation/Novel Analogy, in A Companion to Comparative Literature, edited by Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas (November, 2011), pp. 369-386, JOHN WILEY & SONS LTD [repository], [doi]
7. Anderson, DJWW; Keller, RE, Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties (2011), pp. 328-328, Duke University Press
8. Jenson, D, The Common Without Copies, the International Without Cosmopolitanism: Marx Against the Romanticism of Likeness, Rethinking Marxism, vol. 22 no. 3 (2010), pp. 420-433, Informa UK Limited [repository], [doi]  [abs]
9. Jenson, D, Hegel and Dessalines: Philosophy and the African Diaspora, New West Indian Guide, vol. 84 no. 3-4 (2010), pp. 4-9, ISSN 1382-2373 [repository]
10. Jenson, D, 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 [repository]  [abs]
11. Jenson, D, The Writing of Disaster in Haiti: Signifying Cataclysm from Slave Revolution to Earth Quake, in Haiti Rising, edited by Munro, M (2010), pp. 103-112, Liverpool University Press [publication.asp]
12. Jenson, D; Kadish, D, Sarah, An English Translation (2008), MLA Editions
13. Jenson, D, 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 Hargreaves, A, vol. 1 (2010), pp. 15-35, Liverpool University Press [publication.asp]
14. Jenson, D, 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
15. Jenson, D, Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A ‘French’ Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism, edited by Hargreaves, A; Mourra, J-M, vol. 10 no. 3 (2007), pp. 329-342 [ijfs.10.3.329_1]
16. Jenson, D, 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 Ndiaye, C (2007), pp. 27-56, Presses nationales d’Haïti
17. Jenson, D, Myth, History, and Witnessing in Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s Caribbean Poetics, edited by Paliyenko, A, vol. 47 no. 4 (2007), pp. 329-343, ISSN 0014-0767 [html]
18. Jenson, D, The Haiti Issue, Yale French Studies, vol. 107 (2005)
19. Jenson, D, Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (2001), pp. 294 pages, Johns Hopkins UP

Conferences Organized

• Director : 3rd Annual Romance Studies Undergraduate Research Conference. March, 2013, Director : 3rd Annual Romance Studies Undergraduate Research Conference, March, 2013  
• Selection Committee, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Conference. December 17, 2012, Selection Committee, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Conference, December 2012  
• Orgaanizer : 'Old' Worlds, 'New' Worlds, Future Worlds Romance Studies Undergraduate Research Conference. March, 2012, Orgaanizer : 'Old' Worlds, 'New' Worlds, Future Worlds Romance Studies Undergraduate Research Conference, March, 2012  
• Selection Committee, NIneteenth-Century French Studies Conference. 2011, Selection Committee, NIneteenth-Century French Studies Conference, 2011  
• Co-Organizer : Haiti Lab Workshop, "Unveiling the Colonial System": The Baron de Vastey and the Henry Christophe Regime. December, 2011, Co-Organizer : Haiti Lab Workshop, "Unveiling the Colonial System": The Baron de Vastey and the Henry Christophe Regime, December, 2011  
• PFIRST Workshop, "Discourses of Trauma in Haiti" (Co-Organizer). November, 2011, PFIRST Workshop, "Discourses of Trauma in Haiti" (Co-Organizer), November, 2011  
• Co-Organizer (with Michaeline Crichlow (Duke, Sociology and AAAS, Patricia Northover (UWI, SALISES), Matthew Smith (UWI, History, Faculty of the Human, 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