Deborah Jenson | Scholars@Duke

Deborah Jenson
Professor of Romance Studies

A scholar of "long 19th century" French and Caribbean literature and culture, I also work in the fields of cognitive literary studies and health humanities. Monographs, edited volumes, editions, and translations include: Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution ; Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France; Poetry of Haitian Independence (with D. Kadish and N. Shapiro); Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignty (with W. Anderson and R. Keller); Sarah, A Colonial Novella (with D. Kadish); and "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays by Hélène Cixous . A co-authored book on Trauma and Humanitarian Emergency in Haiti is under contract, and a monograph project, The Making and Unmaking of the Brain as Episteme in French and Caribbean Modernity, is in process. I have previously served as the director of the Franklin Humanities Institute and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. A co-director of the Health Humanities Lab, my recent courses have included "Storytelling in Medicine and Health," and "Flaubert's Brain: Neurohumanities."

Office Hours

Fridays 11-1, 112 Language Center, or by appointment

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Professor of Romance Studies, Romance Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2009
Faculty Network Member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, University Institutes and Centers 2009
Associate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke Science & Society, Initiatives 2018

Contact Information

112 Language Center, Box 90257, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
205 Language Center, Box 90257, Durham, NC 27708-0257
deborah.jenson@duke.edu (919) 660-3122
http://www.fhi.duke.edu/labs/haiti-lab

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., Harvard University 1994
- M.A., University of Paris (France) 1985
- B.A., Bowdoin College 1983
Duke Appointment History
- Research Professor of Global Health, Duke Global Health Institute, University Institutes and Centers 2013 - 2018
- Director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, University Institutes and Centers 2015 - 2017
- Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies of French, Romance Studies, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2011
Recognition
In the News
- APR 25, 2017
  
  New FHI Lab Meshes Humanities and Health to Improve Patient Experiences
- AUG 9, 2016
  
  New Program To Expand Career Opportunities for Ph.D Students
- JAN 28, 2016
  
  Jennifer Pinckney, Charleston Church Shooting Survivor, to Speak at Duke
- SEP 15, 2015
  
  Using Humanities to Improve Healthcare
- APR 8, 2015
  
  Mellon Grant Supports Exploration of Global Health Humanities
- FEB 25, 2015
  
  Deborah Jenson to Direct Franklin Humanities Institute
- JAN 6, 2015
  
  News Tip: Haiti Rebuilds Slowly, Education Initiatives Offer Hope Five Years After Earthquake, Duke Experts Say
- JAN 22, 2014
  
  Duke Unveils Own Copy of Haitian Declaration of Independence
- NOV 12, 2013
  
  Duke Neurohumanities in Paris
- AUG 12, 2013
  
  Haiti Cholera Finding Shows Need for Ethics, Responsibility
- JUL 2, 2013
  
  Movin' Out: Duke's First Humanities Labs Close Up Shop
Expertise
Global Scholarship
- Expertise
  - France (Country)
  - Haiti (Country)
- Research
  - France (Country)
  - Haiti (Country)
- Teaching
  - France (Country)
  - Haiti (Country)
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Books
  - Kadish, D, Jenson, D, and Shapiro, TBN. Poetry of the Haitian Independence. Translated by N Shapiro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. (Edited Book) Link to Item
  - Kadish, D, Jenson, D, and Shapiro, TBN. Poetry of the Haitian Independence. Translated by N Shapiro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. (Edited Book) Link to Item
  - Anderson, DJWW, and Keller, RE. Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignties. Duke University Press, 2011.
  - Jenson, D, Anderson, W, and Keller, RE. Globalizing the Unconscious. 2011.
  - Jenson, D. Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. Liverpool University Press, 2011. (Monograph) Link to Item
  - Jenson, D, and Kadish, D. Sarah, An English Translation. MLA Editions, 2008.
  - Jenson, D, and Kadish, D. Sarah, An English Translation. MLA Editions, 2008.
  - Jenson, D, and Kadish, D. Sarah, The Original French Text. 2008. (Edited Book)
  - Jenson, D, and Kadish, D. Sarah, The Original French Text. 2008. (Edited Book)
  - Jenson, D. Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France. Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.
  - Cixous, H. "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays by Hélène Cixous. Edited by D Jenson. Translated by D Jenson, S Cornell, A Liddle, and S Sellers. Harvard University Press, 1992. (Edited Book) Link to Item
  - Cixous, H. "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays by Hélène Cixous. Edited by D Jenson. Translated by D Jenson, S Cornell, A Liddle, and S Sellers. Harvard University Press, 1992. (Edited Book) Link to Item
- Academic Articles
  - Jenson, D. "Neuroscience and the Poetics of the Haitian Declaration of Independence." Edited by J Gaffield. (2014). (Academic Article)
  - "Sources and interpretations jean-jacques dessalines and the African character of the haitian revolution." William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (July 1, 2012): 615-638. (Review) Full Text
  - "Introduction: Caribbean Entanglements in Times of Crises." The Global South 6, no. 1 (2012): 1-1. Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Deborah Jenson, . "Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the African Character of the Haitian Revolution." The William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (2012): 615-615. Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, . "Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, by Kamaia L. Glover." Research in African Literatures 43, no. 3 (2012): 135-135. Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D, and Dubois, L. "Humanities in the Lab: Rethinking Haitian Studies." Diversity and Democracy: Civic Learning for Shared Futures 15 (2012).
  - Jenson, D. "States of Ghetto, Ghettos of States: Haiti and the ‘Era de Francia’ in the Dominican Republic, 1804-1808." The Global South 106 (2012): 156-71. Open Access Copy
  - "Kidnapped Narratives: Mobility without Autonomy and the Nation/Novel Analogy." (November 25, 2011): 369-386. (Chapter) Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D, Szabo, V, and Duke FHI Haiti Humanities Laboratory Student Research Team, . "Cholera in Haiti and other Caribbean regions, 19th century." Emerging Infectious Diseases 17, no. 11 (November 2011): 2130-2135. Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D, and Szabo, V. "Cholera in Haiti and Other Caribbean Regions, 19th Century." Emerging Infectious Diseases 17, no. 11 (November 1, 2011): 2130-2135. (Review) Full Text Open Access Copy Link to Item
  - Jenson, D, and Iacoboni, M. "Literary Biomimesis: Mirror Neurons and the Ontological Priority of Representation." California Italian Studies (2011). (Academic Article) Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination." INTERVENTIONS-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES 13, no. 2 (2011): 328-330. Link to Item
  - Jenson, D. "The common without copies, the international without cosmopolitanism: Marx against the romanticism of likeness." Rethinking Marxism 22, no. 3 (July 1, 2010): 420-433. Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Dessalines’s American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence." The Journal of Haitian Studies Vol. 15 (2010): 72-102. (Academic Article) Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Hegel and Dessalines: Philosophy and the African Diaspora." New West Indian Guide 84 (2010): 4-9. (Academic Article) Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Hegel and Dessalines: Philosophy and the African Diaspora." New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West Indische Gids 84, no. 3-4 (January 1, 2010): 269-275. Full Text
  - Jenson, D. "Myth, History, and Witnessing in Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s Caribbean Poetics." Edited by A Paliyenko. L’Esprit Créateur 47 (2007): 329-343. (Academic Article) Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A ‘French’ Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism." Edited by A Hargreaves and J-M Mourra. International Journal of Francophone Studies 10 (2007): 329-342. (Academic Article) Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Myth, history, and witnessing in Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's Caribbean poetics." Esprit Createur 47, no. 4 (January 1, 2007): 81-92. (Review) Full Text
  - Jenson, D. "The persons and things school: Parrots, peasants, and pariahs in "Un Coeur simple" and la Chaumière indienne." Differences 17, no. 3 (December 1, 2006): 107-125. Full Text Open Access Copy
  - Jenson, D. "Louise Ackermann's Monstrous Nature." Symposium 53, no. 4 (2000): 234-247. Open Access Copy
- Book Sections
  - Jenson, D. "Toussaint Louverture, genio 'cimarrôn' y multimodial." In Toussaint Louverture: repensar un icono, edited by M Past and NM Léger, 217-230. Santiago de Cuba: Casa del Caribe, 2015. (Chapter)
  - Jenson, D, and Curtis, L. "The Haitian Revolution." In The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, edited by P Mason, 277-284. Gale, 2013.
  - Jenson, D. "Placing Haiti in Geopsychoanalytic Space: Toward a Postcolonial Concept of Traumatic Mimesis." In Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Trauma, and Sovereignty. 2011.
  - Jenson, D. "Surrealism and the Avant Garde Novel, and The Decadent Novel." In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel. 2011.
  - Jenson, D. "The Writing of Disaster in Haiti: Signifying Cataclysm from Slave Revolution to Earth Quake." In Haiti Rising, edited by M Munro, 103-112. Liverpool University Press, 2010.
  - 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 A Hargreaves, 15-35. Liverpool University Press, 2010.
  - 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 A Hargreaves, C Forsdick, and D Murphy, 15-35. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2010. (Chapter)
  - Jenson, D. "Mirror Revolutions: Ourika and Saint-Domingue." In "Approaches to Teaching Claire de Duras’s ‘Ourika,’” ed. Mary Ellen Birkett and Christopher Rivers (New York: Modern Language Editions, 2009) pp.45-50. 2009.
  - Miller, DJWCL. "Historical Timeline." In Approaches to Teaching Claire de Duras’s ‘Ourika,’” ed. Mary Ellen Birkett and Christopher Rivers (New York: Modern Language Editions, MLA Editions, 2009) pp.12-17. 2009.
  - 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, 41-62. University of Virginia Press, 2008.
  - 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 C Ndiaye, 27-56. Presses nationales d’Haïti, 2007.
- Other Articles
  - Jenson, D, and Dubois, L. "Haiti Can Be Rich Again." New York Times (January 8, 2012). (Scholarly Commentary)
  - Jenson, D. "From the kidnapping(s) of the Louvertures to the alleged kidnapping of aristide: Legacies of slavery in the post/colonial world." Yale French Studies 107 (December 1, 2005): 162-186.
  - Jenson, D. "The Haiti Issue." Yale French Studies 107 (2005).
- Journal Issues
  - Jenson, D, Desormeaux, D, Bongie, C, Kadish, D, and Nesbitt, NF. "The Haiti Issue: 1804 and Nineteenth-Century French Studies." Edited by Jenson, D. Yale French Studies , no. 107 (2005). (Journal Issue) Link to Item
  - Jenson, D, Desormeaux, D, Bongie, C, Kadish, D, and Nesbitt, NF. "The Haiti Issue: 1804 and Nineteenth-Century French Studies." Edited by Jenson, D. Yale French Studies , no. 107 (2005). (Journal Issue) Link to Item
- Datasets
  - Szabo, V, Jenson, D, Cloninger, E, Corbett, P, Hoyle, M, Ivker, J, Jernigan, E, Mitril, S, Neville, A, Patel, D, Duke University Haiti Laboratory, and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, . "19th-Century Caribbean Cholera Timemap." (2011). Link to Item
Artistic Works & Non-Print Media
- Installations
  - Haiti: History Embedded in Amber. Director. 2011
Teaching & Mentoring
Recent Courses
Scholarly, Clinical, & Service Activities
Presentations & Appearances
Outreach & Engaged Scholarship
- Bass Connections Faculty Team Member. Trauma and Timing. August 2013 - May 2014 2013 - 2014
Service to the Profession

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Education, Training, & Certifications

Duke Appointment History

In the News

Global Scholarship

Expertise

Research

Teaching

Selected Publications

Books

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Other Articles

Journal Issues

Datasets

Artistic Works & Non-Print Media

Installations

Recent Courses

Presentations & Appearances

Outreach & Engaged Scholarship

Service to the Profession