Dr. Kara Rabbitt - Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Office:   Atrium 260
Phone:   (973) 720-2180
Email:   rabbittk@wpunj.edu
Office Hours:  

Department: Languages and Cultures
Position: Professor of French and Francophone Studies; Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Area Specialization: 19th-Century French Literature; Caribbean Literature; Francophone Studies; Cultural Studies; Poetics; Linguistic Analyses of Literature.

Educational Background

• Ph.D., French Literature and Linguistics: Cornell University, Department of Romance Studies, 1996.
• M.A., French Literature and Linguistics: Cornell University, Department of Romance Studies, 1992.
• B.A., Language Studies and Comparative Literature: University of California at Santa Cruz, 1988.

William Paterson Courses Taught

• English 229: Films and Literature
• French 110 and 111:  Basic language and culture
• French 210 and 211:  Intermediate language, culture, composition
• French 200:  Introduction to French and Francophone Cultures and Literatures
• French 222:  Stylistics and Advanced Composition
• French 331:  The Modern Novel in French
• French 336:  French Poetry
• French 337:  Topics in Francophone Literatures
• French 380:  Topics in Parisian Culture:  “Paris Multiple”
• French 399:  Fin de siècle Paris
• French 480:  Senior Seminar in French and Francophone Studies
• Humanities Honors Seminar:  Twentieth-Century and Its Discontents
• TBED 542:  Social and Psychological Processes of the Multi-Cultural Experience

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles:

• “In Search of the Missing Mother: Suzanne Césaire, Martiniquaise.” Research in African Literatures, 44.1 (Spring 2013): 36-54.
• “Identity and Geography in Suzanne Césaire’s ‘Le Grand Camouflage.’” Research in African Literatures, 39.3 (Fall 2008): 121-31.
• “Suzanne Césaire and the Forging of a New Caribbean Literature.”  The French Review, 79.3 (Feb. 2006): 538-48.
• “Reading and Otherness: The Interpretative Triangle in Baudelaire’s Petits poèmes en prose.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 33.3-4 (Spring/Summer 2005): 358-70.
• “L’enfant libertine: Pouvoir discursif et volonté narrative dans Lamiel de Stendhal.”  Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 31.1-2 (Fall/Winter 2002-2003): 66-83.
• “Cultural Genealogies and Pre-Negritude Africanicity in Légitime défense.” SORAC Journal of African Studies 2.1 (Nov. 2002): 1-16.
• “Prose Poem, Anti-poème, Political Force:  The Critical Function of Genre in Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal.”  Romance Notes, 39.1 (1998): 35-46.

Book Chapters:

• “C.L.R. James’s Figuring of Toussaint Louverture:  The Black Jacobins and the Literary Hero.”  In C.L.R. James:  His Intellectual Legacies.  Ed. Selwyn Cudjoe and William Cain.  Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1994.  118-35.

Encyclopedia Entries:

• “Suzanne Césaire.”  Website (in French) for “Ile-en-île” site on Francophone writers (www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile); 2006.
• “Suzanne Césaire.”  Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture.  Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO, 2008.
• “Légitime défense.” Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture.  Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO, 2008.
• “Tropiques.” Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture.  Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO, 2008.

Translations:

• Introduction to and translation of Suzanne Césaire’s “Le Grand Camouflage.”  New Mango Season 1.1 (2007): 27-36.
• “Charles Bally and Pragmatics.”  Translation of text by Oswald Ducrot with Catherine Porter and Linda R. Waugh. Diacritics, 21.4 (1991): 3-19.

Recent Conference Presentations

• “Strengthening the Relationship with College of Education: Working Together to Serve Our Shared Students.”  Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Montreal, Canada, November 2011.
• “Academic Advisement: Confronting the Challenges and Exploring Alternative Models.”  Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Baltimore, MD, November 2009.
• “Revisioning History into Story: Suzanne Césaire cross-examines Lafcadio Hearn on the significance of the 1848 Martinique Slave Revolts,” Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, St. Georges, Grenada, May 2008.
• “Supporting Student Success through College-Level Advisement Initiatives,” co-presenter with Jean Fuller-Stanley, Associate Dean College of Science and Health, WPUNJ.  The New Jersey State Conference of the National Academic Advisors Association, May 2008.
• “In Search of the Missing Mother: Reexamining the Significance of Suzanne Césaire for Martinican Studies,” Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, Hollywood, Florida, May 2006.
• “Living in the ‘Tout-Monde’: Lessons from Martinique,” 9^th International Congress of the Society for Caribbean Research, Vienna, Austria, December 2005.
• “Consequences of a Collective Error: Suzanne Césaire on the Cultural Effects of Assimilation.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Cambridge, March 2005.
• “The Lingering Legacy of the Poètes maudits.”  Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, St. Louis, October 2004.
• “‘À la lisière de cette savane de sel’: The Geography of Identity in Suzanne Césaire.’”  Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, April 2004.
• “Reading into the Other: Desire, Lack, and the Interpretative Self in Baudelaire’s Petits poèmes en prose.”  Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Ohio State University, October 2002.
• “A People of ‘Four Races and Dozens of Bloodlines’: The Critical Construction of Cultural Genealogies in Tropiques.”  Transnational Cultures, Diasporas, and Immigrant Identities in France and the Francophone World, Texas Tech University, March 2002.
• “L’Arme Miraculeuse: Surrealism in the Hands of Suzanne Césaire.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Regional Conference, Hartford, March 2001.
• “Memory Made Text, Memory-Making Text: Post-Colonial Manifesto Discourse in French.”  SUNY Binghamton Conference in Romance Languages and Linguistics, March 2001.
• “Diversity of Negritudes: Tropiques and Légitime Défense.” Society of Research in African Cultures, International Conference, Montclair University, April 2000.
• “Questionings of Classification: The Prose Poem ‘Genre’ as Model of Subversion.”  Northeast Modern Language Association, Buffalo, New York, April 2000.