Soraya Limare

Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies (tenure-track)
The University of Texas at Austin

Soraya Limare is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of the literature, history, philosophy and visual and performing arts of the Francophone world, particularly from the Caribbean. She received her PhD in French from Columbia University (2025). She is an alumna of the Ecole Normale Supérieure-Ulm and holds a BA and an MA in French and Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne.

She is currently at work on her first monograph project, Revolutionary Afterlives: Haiti in World Culture, a study of transnational representations of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) in 20th- and 21st- century works of literature, historiography, performance and visual arts. She has received support for this project via fellowships from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, and the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: Sites, Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts, Global Black Thought, and in the collective volume Theatre and Revolution: Global Perspectives on Performance (eds. Logan J. Connors, Lillian Manzor, Emily Sahakian). She has co-translated, with André Pettman, Assia Djebar’s inaugural speech at the Académie Française and is currently writing a critical introduction to accompany its publication.

Publications

Peer-reviewed articles & book chapters

2026

« Derrière Toussaint, Césaire : représentations césairiennes de Toussaint Louverture. »

Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts, no. 15, « Toussaint Louverture, héros de quelle histoire ? », edited by Alison Boulanger (2026).

Journal article · doi:10.54563/gfhla.726

Abstract At several points during his literary and political career, Aimé Césaire turned to the case of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian revolution in his works. These historical references allowed him to voice his own uneasy relationship to mainland France. Through his portrayals of the Haitian leader, he addresses a specific problem, that of universality. Rejecting the pseudo-universality found in colonial discourse, Césaire called for a universal that would encompass all particularities in their richness and variety. Over time, his political positions shifted in ways that might seem contradictory; and yet they always reflected his tenet that the universal can only be drawn from the particular.

Plaques in honor of Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire in the Panthéon in Paris. Photos: Benjamin Gavaudo / Centre des monuments nationaux, Licence Ouverte
2025

“Revolutionary Time in Édouard Glissant’s Monsieur Toussaint and Maryse Condé’s An tan révolisyon.”

In Theatre and Revolution: Global Perspectives on Performance, edited by Logan J. Connors, Lillian Manzor, and Emily Sahakian. Routledge, 2025.

Book chapter · View the volume

Abstract This essay offers a comparative reading of Edouard Glissant’s Monsieur Toussaint (1977, version scénique) and Maryse Condé’s An tan révolisyon (1989), focusing on the models of revolutionary time that emerge from these two plays. These twentieth-century dramatic portrayals of the events of the revolutionary era at the turn of the nineteenth century in the Caribbean glean the past through the lens of present preoccupations with an eye to opening possibilities for the future. In this sense, both of these plays’ temporality resonates with what Edouard Glissant has called “a prophetic vision of the past” in his preface to the 1961 edition of Monsieur Toussaint. But within this common framework, each play displays a different model of revolutionary time: Glissant centers, in a solemn tone, on the iconic figure of Toussaint Louverture, who, imprisoned in Fort de Joux, casts a retrospective glance on his trajectory as he projects himself toward his inevitable death. In contrast, Condé’s play foregrounds a Caribbean storyteller, Zéphyr, who is a forgotten figure of history and guides the audience through the events presented on stage through a parodic perspective.

Theatre and Revolution: Global Perspectives on Performance (Routledge)
2025

“Halka/Haiti: Performing the Dialogue between Haitian and Polish Independences.”

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES 29, no. 4 (2025): 513–525.

Journal article · doi:10.1080/17409292.2025.2533013

Abstract The Polish Pavilion of the 2015 Venice Biennale presented an operatic performance entitled Halka/Haiti, written by two Polish artists, C.T. Jasper and Joanna Malinowska, and performed by a cast of Polish and Haitian musicians and dancers. This Polish homage to Haiti speaks both to the ways in which Poland and Haiti were put in Relation during the Haitian Revolution and to the universal nature of the Haitian Revolution as a symbol of self-acquired freedom and independence. This article examines the process of cultural translation at work in this artistic dialogue between two countries, Haiti and Poland, which are historically and symbolically tied together through their common struggle for independence. Through an analysis of the 2015 performance itself and of its context, as well as of historiographical questions surrounding the involvement of the 5,500 Polish soldiers sent to Saint-Domingue during the war of independence, it interrogates issues of commodification and appropriation of another’s history alongside the process of cultural translation that is a testament to the translatability of the Haitian Revolution into other contexts across linguistic, geographical and cultural boundaries.

The performance of Halka in Cazale, Haiti, February 2015. Film still from Halka/Haiti 18°48’05″N 72°23’01″ W, C.T. Jasper & Joanna Malinowska, shown at the Polish Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, 2015. Courtesy of the artists and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

Forthcoming

Forth.

“Académies.” With André Pettman.

In Dictionnaire Assia Djebar, edited by Maya Boutaghou and Anne Donadey. Paris: Honoré Champion.

Dictionary entry
Forth.

Review of A History of Haitian Literature, edited by Marlene L. Daut and Kaiama L. Glover (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Global Black Thought.

Book review

Teaching

Unless otherwise stated, the syllabi linked below were created by Soraya Limare.

The University of Texas at Austin

Assistant Professor · 2025–present

Spring 2027 Upcoming

T C 358 · Plan II Honors junior seminar

Caribbean Literature and Painting: Haiti

This course explores Haitian history and culture through the country’s rich literature and painting. The materials cover a broad time period, spanning from pre-revolutionary colonial Saint-Domingue to present-day Haiti, with particular attention paid to the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), the 1825 indemnity, the US occupation of Haiti (1915–1930), the Duvalier dictatorships (1959–1986), the 2010 earthquake and its aftermath. Themes will include the struggle for freedom from enslavement and colonization, the roles and experiences of women, vodou as a cultural framework and religion, economics, dictatorship and exile, and the environment. Students will familiarize themselves with important concepts that have emerged from Haitian Studies, such as dynamics of silencing and “Haitian exceptionalism.” Through the study of a wide range of both literary and visual primary sources, students will be able to expand their understanding and appreciation of Haitian culture beyond and against the reductive ways Haiti and Haitians are too often depicted in the media. This course will equip students with knowledge and skills that will serve them well in their studies beyond Haitian Studies. They will be encouraged to think about power dynamics at play in the crafting of historical narratives, as well as how the arts – literary and visual – are influenced by history while simultaneously making singular interventions in our understanding of history, our contemporary moment, and future possibilities.

Readings

Marie Chauvet, Love · René Depestre, Hadriana in All My Dreams · Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew · Myriam J. A. Chancy, Village Weavers · Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory · A History of Haitian Literature, edited by Marlene L. Daut and Kaiama L. Glover · Haitian Revolutionary Fictions, edited by Marlene L. Daut, Grégory Pierrot and Marion C. Rohrleitner · Édouard Glissant’s writings on Haitian painting in Caribbean Discourse · Haitian paintings from Grinnell College’s online collection · secondary readings by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Colin Dayan, Kaiama L. Glover and Nadège Clitandre

Paintings by Patricia Brintle. From left to right: Catherine Flon, Cécile Fatiman, Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière, Sanité Bélair. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Fall 2026 Now teaching

FR 390N / AFR 385C · Graduate seminar

Thinking from the Caribbean

This course traces a filiation of intellectual movements, from Négritude to Créolité and beyond, that have played a constitutive role in shaping the cultural landscape of the francophone Caribbean. While acknowledging the foundational status of authors such as Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant, the course also features previously marginalized and dissident voices such as those of Suzanne Césaire, Marie Chauvet, Jane & Paulette Nardal and Maryse Condé. Women’s contributions to Caribbean intellectual and literary movements have often been overlooked or framed as mere supports. Alongside canonical approaches to francophone Caribbean literature and culture, the course explores contemporary epistemologies such as decolonial ecology and the Caribbean digital, showing how these build on the foundations laid by thinkers such as Aimé Césaire and Edouard Glissant while deploying new methodologies. While the course has a strong focus on the francophone Caribbean, it also includes works from the hispanophone and anglophone Caribbean.

Units

Négritude, Negritude women, migritude and océanitude · Antillanité and Créolité · Dissident voices · Indigénisme, spiralism and marvelous realism · A decolonial ecology · The Caribbean digital

Readings

Introduction Keywords for Caribbean Studies (The Caribbean Digital)

Négritude, Negritude women, migritude, océanitude Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “Négritude” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) · Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal · T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Negritude Women · Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora · Suzanne Césaire, Le Grand Camouflage : écrits de dissidence · unpublished texts by the Nardal sisters · Shailja Patel, Migritude · Anaïs Maurer, The Ocean on Fire

Antillanité and Créolité Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation · Antonio Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating Island · Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant, Éloge de la créolité · Patrick Chamoiseau, L’Esclave vieil homme et le molosse

Dissident voices Maryse Condé, “Order, Disorder, Freedom, and the West Indian Writer” and Heremakhonon · Kaiama L. Glover, A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being · Myriam J. A. Chancy, Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women · Myriam J. A. Chancy, Village Weavers

Indigénisme, spiralism and marvelous realism Jean Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l’oncle · Kaiama L. Glover, Haiti Unbound · Jacques Stephen Alexis, “Du réalisme merveilleux des Haïtiens” · Colin Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods · René Depestre, Hadriana dans tous mes rêves · Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World · Aimé Césaire, La Tragédie du roi Christophe · Marlene L. Daut, The First and Last King of Haiti

A decolonial ecology Malcolm Ferdinand, A Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World · Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place · Jessica Oublié et al., Tropiques toxiques

The Caribbean digital Jeanne Jégousso and Emily O’Dell, “Thinking Digital: Archives and Glissant Studies in the Twenty-First Century” · Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel, “Visualizing Sovereignty: Cartographic Queries for the Digital Age”

View syllabus

Lucy, Paulette and Jeanne Nardal in their apartment in Clamart. 61 J Papiers Nardal, Archives départementales de Martinique Exhibited in Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica.
Fall 2026 Now teaching

FR 325C Crisis and Conflict · Undergraduate · Taught in French

“Both Outside and Inside”: Senghor, Djebar and Laferrière at the Académie française

This course explores the literary and cinematic works of Leopold Sedar Senghor, Assia Djebar and Dany Laferrière, from Senegal, Algeria and Haiti respectively, members of the Académie Française, a prestigious institution that celebrates the accomplishments of the most illustrious French language writers. Students will learn about the histories of Senegal, Algeria and Haiti as well as about the individual trajectories of each of these three authors and the different historical, cultural and linguistic contexts in which they created their works. Through close readings of various works of literature, cinema and visual arts, this course will foster reflections on the histories of the Francophone world, language politics, and the paradox of being celebrated as, in the words of Assia Djebar, “both outside and inside” the summit of French cultural prestige.

Units

The Académie française · Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) · Assia Djebar (Algeria) · Dany Laferrière (Haiti)

Readings

Léopold Sédar Senghor Ce que je crois · reception speech at the Académie française · Chants d’ombre and Hosties noires · Liberté III: Négritude et civilisation de l’universel · Ousmane Sembène, Emitaï (1971) and Ceddo (1977) (films)

Assia Djebar reception speech at the Académie française · Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement · paintings by Delacroix and Picasso · La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli and La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (films) · Gillo Pontecorvo, La Bataille d’Alger (film)

Dany Laferrière reception speech at the Académie française · L’Énigme du retour · films by Raoul Peck

View syllabus

Announcement of Assia Djebar’s election to the Académie française, Le Monde, June 18, 2005. Photo: Bettina Flitner/laif
Spring 2026

FR 350F Francophone Literature and Culture · Undergraduate · Taught in French

Coming Home: Narratives of Return in Francophone Literature

After a transformational journey, is it possible to return home and to claim a stable identity? This fundamental question posed by Homer’s Odyssey animates many literary works. This course focuses on narratives of return in francophone novels set in France, the Caribbean, West Africa, Algeria, the Middle East and Canada. We first return to The Odyssey as a foundational text to explore questions of identity and transformation, stability and change, adventure and nostalgia. We then interrogate the notion of return in colonial and postcolonial contexts from philosophical, sociological, historical and literary perspectives. We consider the theoretical question raised by the Négritude movement of whether a symbolic return to Africa as a lost motherland is possible after the Middle Passage. By contrast, we also explore the notion of migritude (coined by Shailja Patel and Jacques Chévrier) as a mode of being that has largely eclipsed the dream of return and the cultivation of roots. We also consider the notion of return in the case of the restitution of African art. The course ends with a unit on sociological considerations in the literature of ‘class transfuges’ such as Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon, where return is approached with a sense of revulsion rather than nostalgia, as a form of going backwards rather than a desired recovery. This section of the course touches upon issues of class, education and sexuality. While learning about different historical and geographical contexts, we discuss transversal themes of longing for a lost homeland, fraught relationships with one’s homeland upon return from exile, illusion and disillusionment. We also ask ourselves what forms have been most commonly employed to depict narratives of return, considering, for example, whether first person perspectives are particularly well suited to address this notion.

Units

Adventure and nostalgia in ancient Greece · Colonial narratives of return in the Caribbean · Africa as an imagined motherland · The restitution of artworks · Migritude · Multigenerational trauma in North African narratives · Sociological narratives of return

Readings

Adventure and nostalgia in ancient Greece Homère, L’Odyssée, trans. Phillipe Jaccottet (books 5, 9, 19, 21 and 23)

Colonial narratives of return in the Caribbean Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal · Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs

Africa as an imagined motherland Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “Négritude” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) · Maryse Condé, Hérémakhonon and “Order, Disorder, Freedom, and the West Indian Writer”

The restitution of artworks Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain : vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle · Nora Philippe, Restituer ? L’Afrique en quête de ses chefs-d’œuvre (film) · Mati Diop, Dahomey (film) · Souleymane Bachir Diagne, lecture for La Chaire du Louvre, 2024

Migritude Dany Laferrière, reception speech at the Académie française and L’Énigme du retour

Multigenerational trauma in North African narratives Alice Zeniter, L’Art de perdre

Sociological narratives of return Annie Ernaux, L’Autre fille, “Retours”, La Place , interviews and Nobel lecture · Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot, Les Années Super 8 (film) · Didier Eribon, Retour à Reims

View syllabus

Odysseus Revealing Himself to Penelope, Unknown German artist, 1800–1850. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1982.698
Spring 2026

FR 325E Representing Difference · Undergraduate · Taught in French

Utopia and Dystopia in Francophone Travel Narratives

This course explores the notions of utopia and dystopia as they appear in travel narratives including Early Modern French ethnological travel writings about Brazil and the Caribbean, fictional utopias, the writings of Arab travelers about 19th century France, Orientalism, French visions of 19th century America, and novels of migration to and from the Caribbean, North Africa and Senegal. We study the themes of return, insularity, empiricism and the imaginary, and illusion and disillusionment.

Readings

Michel de Montaigne, “Des cannibales” · François Rabelais, “L’Abbaye de Thélème,” from Gargantua · André Thevet, Les Singularités de la France antarctique · Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et empires de la Lune · Denis Diderot, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville · Flora Tristan, Pérégrinations d’une paria · Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique · Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi, L’Or de Paris · Mati Diop, Atlantique (film) · Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal · Jessica Oublié, Peyi an nou · Cheikh Hamidou Kane, L’Aventure ambiguë

View syllabus

Portrait of Flora Tristan and illustration of Cyrano de Bergerac’s États et empires de la lune
Fall 2025

FR 390N · Graduate seminar

Ecocritical Readings of the Francophone World

This course will explore ecocritical approaches to the Francophone world including mainland France, the Caribbean, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific, from the 1700s to the present. We will take an interdisciplinary approach that engages a wide variety of media and materials, including novels, films, bandes dessinées, digital projects, visual art, activism, and historical, political and philosophical writings. The course will be divided into five parts. The first unit will study the “Plantationocene” i.e. the idea that the irreversible human transformation of the earth began before the industrial revolution with the intensive agriculture and mass forced migrations of plantation agriculture. The second unit, “unnatural disasters”, considers natural disasters such as hurricanes as effects of climate change resulting from human activities. The third unit explores the intersection of feminism and environmentalism in ecofeminist discourse. The fourth examines nuclear colonialism in the Algerian Sahara and the Pacific. The last unit centers on the environmental toll of digital technologies and how to address this problem through sustainable design choices in the building of digital humanities projects.

Our readings and discussions will be guided by the following questions: How have colonialism and neocolonial dynamics in places like Martinique and Guadeloupe contributed to environmental pollution and destruction and how have activist and artistic discourses responded to these harms? What can literature and art contribute to a cause that is urgent and life threatening and therefore perhaps more suitably addressed through the mode of activism? How has the category of “natural disaster” been crafted in such a way that obliterates the politically orchestrated neglect and furthering of such disasters in places like Haiti and Puerto Rico? How do feminism and environmentalism intersect in ecofeminist critiques? What are the ethics of depicting environmental destruction and catastrophe through aesthetic means? How does ‘minimal computing’ address the problem of the environmental toll of digital technologies on the one hand and unequal access to bandwidth in places like the Caribbean on the other? Students will be exposed to interdisciplinary sources and methods and consider these questions from a global perspective and from a diversity of viewpoints in the Francophone world.

Units

The Plantationocene · (Un)natural disasters · Ecofeminism · Nuclear colonialism in the Algerian Sahara and the Pacific · The environmental cost of digital technologies

Readings

The Plantationocene Malcolm Ferdinand, Une écologie décoloniale : penser l’écologie depuis le monde caribbéen · Jessica Oublié et al., Tropiques toxiques : le scandale du chlordécone · Jennifer Boum Make, “La pollution au chlordécone dans les Antilles françaises racontée dans Tropiques toxiques, de Jessica Oublié et al.” · Stephanie Posthumus, French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically · Tao Leigh Goffe, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis · Aimé Césaire, Une tempête · Jacques Roumain, Gouverneurs de la rosée · Maryse Condé, En attendant la montée des eaux and “Order, Disorder, Freedom, and the West Indian Writer”

(Un)natural disasters Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón, eds., Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico before and after the Storm · Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 · Myriam J. A. Chancy, Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters and What Storm, What Thunder

Ecofeminism Annie Lulu, Peine des faunes · Radu Mihăileanu, La Source des femmes (film)

Nuclear colonialism Anaïs Maurer, The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists · Gaspard d’Allens, Pierre Bonneau and Cécile Guillard, 100 000 ans : Bure ou le scandale enfoui des déchets nucléaires · Jill Jarvis, “Radiant Matter: Technologies of Light and the Long Shadow of French Nuclear Imperialism in the Algerian Sahara” · Elisabeth Leuvrey and Bruno Hadjih, At(h)ôme (film)

View syllabus

Jessica Oublié, Nicola Gobbi, Kathrine Avraam and Vinciane Lebrun, Tropiques toxiques : le scandale du chlordécone (Les Escales / Steinkis)

Columbia University

Core Curriculum & Columbia in Paris · 2022–2025

2023–2025

COCI CC1101–CC1102 · Core Curriculum · Core Preceptor

Contemporary Civilization

Contemporary Civilization Preceptor Teaching Award, 2023–24

Member, Collective Syllabus Review Committee for Contemporary Civilization, 2024

Course description and common syllabus by Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum; not created by Soraya Limare.

The purpose of Contemporary Civilization, or “CC”, as it is popularly known, is to introduce students to a range of issues concerning the kinds of communities—political, social, moral, and religious—that human beings construct, and the values that inform and define such communities. Founded in 1919 to prepare students to confront “the insistent problems of the present,” Contemporary Civilization has evolved continuously while remaining a constant element of the Columbia College curriculum. The course asks students to read texts that offer a wide range of perspectives, to experiment with ideas, follow their own inquiries, and present their own perspectives about the issues that these texts raise. In doing so, students develop their skills as thinkers and communicators.

The aim of Contemporary Civilization is not to endorse or celebrate the often conflicting ideas of the authors studied in class, but rather to engage with them critically. By exploring a range of perspectives, students will gain a better sense of the ideas that have shaped the world they have inherited, develop the power to imagine experiences and understand opinions different from their own, and test their own values in a way that may strengthen them or prompt revision. The ultimate goal of Contemporary Civilization is to foster a community in which students can deepen their understanding of the world and their place within it, recognize the limits of their own perspectives and experiences, and engage respectfully with one another across their differences.

Units

Epicureanism and Stoicism · Medieval Rationalism and Mysticism · Medieval Political Thought · Conquest of the Americas · Revolutions and Rights · American Perspectives · Anti-Colonialism and Resistance · Race, Gender, and Sexuality · Climate and Futures

Readings

Fall Plato, Republic · Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics and Politics · Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus” · Epictetus, Handbook · Marcus Aurelius, Meditations · the Bible: Exodus, Matthew, Romans, Galatians · Augustine, City of God · the Qur’an · Ibn Tufayl, The Story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan · al-Ghazali, The Rescuer from Error · Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah · Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies · Machiavelli, The Prince or The Discourses · Council of Castile, El Requerimiento · Miguel León-Portilla, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico · Francisco de Vitoria, On the American Indians · Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, “Appeal Concerning the Priests” · Martin Luther, “Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans,” “Concerning Governmental Authority” and “Friendly Admonition to Peace Concerning the Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants” · “The Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants” · Descartes, Discourse on the Method or Meditations on First Philosophy · Hobbes, Leviathan · Locke, Second Treatise of Government · Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men and On the Social Contract

Spring Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations · Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals · the Declaration of Independence · the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States · the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) · Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman · the Haitian Constitution of 1801 · the Haitian Declaration of Independence · the 1805 Constitution of Haiti · Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Tocqueville, Democracy in America and “Essay on Algeria” · Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” · The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan · Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Address to the Legislature of New York” · Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” · David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World · John Stuart Mill, On Liberty · The Marx-Engels Reader · Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals · Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents or Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis · W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk and “The Souls of White Folk” · B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste · Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic · M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule · Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth · Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” · Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish · Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement” · Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex · Barbara Fields, “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America” · Kohei Saito, Slow Down: A Degrowth Manifesto · An Ecomodernist Manifesto · Robert Pollin, “De-growth vs. a Green New Deal” · Mark Burton and Peter Somerville, “Degrowth: A Defence” · Kyle Whyte, “Is It Colonial Déjà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice”

Core Curriculum reading list

A student reading on the steps of Low Library, below the Alma Mater statue, 1940s. Columbia University Archives
Summer 2022

FREN 3524 · Columbia's Global Center at Reid Hall, Paris · Instructor of record

Littérature-monde: Contemporary French Literature in a Global Context

Taught in French at Columbia's Global Center at Reid Hall, Paris

Course description by Séverine Martin; reading list adapted by Soraya Limare from Séverine Martin's original syllabus.

The main thread guiding this course will be an interrogation on the place of French literature in today’s global landscape. Drawing on the complex history of France’s colonial past, as well as on the rich debates that shaped French intellectual history in the aftermath of World War Two, this course will offer a variety of readings reflective of French geographic and cultural diversity (e.g.: African and Caribbean literature, works focusing on identity politics, multiculturalism, and migration issues). Through encounters with leading figures of today’s French literary scene (e.g.: authors, publishers, literary agents, guest speakers) students will also learn about the global pressures (e.g.: economic, social, political and ideological) that are placed on French literature today, and the ways in which global demands inform the conditions in which literature is being read and produced. A further objective of this course is to demonstrate the diversity of current literary practices and reception modes.

Units

Qu’est-ce que le contemporain ? · World literature, globalization, cosmopolitanism · Qu’est-ce que la littérature francophone ? · French Caribbean literature · Migrant literature: between Europe and Africa

Theatre outings

L’Autre Fille, Annie Ernaux, adapted by Daniel Jeanneteau · T2G – Théâtre de Gennevilliers, June 23, 2022

Tous des oiseaux, written and directed by Wajdi Mouawad · La Colline – théâtre national, June 25, 2022; followed by a class visit from the production’s dramaturge, Charlotte Farcet

Fille(s) de, a collective creation based on Leïla Anis’s Fille de, directed by Julie Deliquet · Théâtre Gérard Philipe, Saint-Denis, July 3, 2022

Readings

Qu’est-ce que le contemporain ? Giorgio Agamben, “What Is the Contemporary?” · Annie Ernaux, L’Autre Fille

World literature, globalization, cosmopolitanism David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? · Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization · Christophe Pradeau and Tiphaine Samoyault, eds., Où est la littérature mondiale ? · Wajdi Mouawad, Tous des oiseaux (play)

Qu’est-ce que la littérature francophone ? Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme · Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs · Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant, Éloge de la créolité · Maryse Condé, “Order, Disorder, Freedom, and the West Indian Writer” · Leïla Anis, Fille de (play) · Maryse Condé, Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer · Mame-Fatou Niang, Mariannes noires (film) · Léopold Sédar Senghor, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte” in Liberté 1 : Négritude et humanisme · Dawn Fulton, “« Respecter l’étrangeté de l’autre » : entretien avec Maryse Condé,” Dalhousie French Studies · Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics · Fabienne Kanor, D’eaux douces · Maboula Soumahoro, Le Triangle et l’Hexagone · Rokhaya Diallo, Les Marches de la liberté (film)

Migrant literature: between Europe and Africa Marie NDiaye, Trois femmes puissantes · Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism · Lydie Moudileno, “Marie NDiaye’s Discombobulated Subject,” SubStance

Youki, the Reid Hall cat

Media

Roundtable · March 2024 · 1 h 25 min How Should H-France Support Digital Humanities Work? A Community Conversation Plenary Panel, Society for French Historical Studies, Hofstra University. With Michael Breen (chair), Cindy Ermus, Kaiama Glover, Soraya Limare, Christy Pichichero, Jeff Ravel and Glenn Roe.

Panel · November 2020 · 1 h 32 min Sugar’s Traces: How Two Women Artists Use Sugar, Water, and Other Elements to Shed Light on Environmental Justice in the Caribbean A conversation between novelist Myriam J. A. Chancy and visual artist Andrea Chung, co-organized with Eirann Cohen and Rachel Kirk, moderated by Soraya Limare. Ecologies Entrelacées and Columbia Global Center, Reid Hall, Paris.

Curriculum Vitae (abridged)

Download Full CV (PDF)

Employment

2025–: Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, The University of Texas at Austin (faculty profile)

Education

2018–2025: PhD in French, Columbia University
2013–2017: Élève, Theater Studies, École normale supérieure (ENS-Ulm), Paris
2014–2015: Master’s in Comparative Literature, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
2013–2014: BA in French Literature, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)
: Erasmus exchange, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge

ORCID iD

: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4956-8403

Fellowships & awards

2023–2024: Fellow, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University
2023–2024: Contemporary Civilization Preceptor Teaching Award, Columbia University
Fall 2022: Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis, France
2022: Core Program Fellow, Columbia University
2019–2021: Digital Fellow, Barnard College Digital Humanities Center
Spring 2017: Distinction in Teaching Award, Derek Bok Center, Harvard University

Invited talks

Oct 2025: “The Memory of Sanité Bélair: Dramatic Portrayals of a Heroine of the Haitian Revolution.” Working Paper Series, Department of French and Italian, UT Austin
Feb 2025: “The Haitian Revolution in Translation.” The University of Texas at Austin; Oberlin College
Mar 2024: “The Global Afterlives of the Haitian Revolution on Stage.” Amherst College
Mar 2024: “How Should H-France Support Digital Humanities Work?” Society for French Historical Studies, Hofstra University
Oct 2022: “Fictions of the Haitian Revolution.” Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France
Dec 2020: The Caribbean Digital VII, virtual symposium

Conference papers

Feb 2026: “Haiti and Africa: Bernard Dadié’s Îles de tempête as a Theatrical Afterlife of the Haitian Revolution on the African Continent.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Montreal
Feb 2024: “Halka/Haiti: Performing the Dialogue between Haitian and Polish Independences.” 20th & 21st Century French & Francophone Studies International Colloquium, Philadelphia
Mar 2023: “Temporal Opacity as Historical Method in Édouard Glissant’s Monsieur Toussaint.” ACLA, Chicago
Mar 2023: “Evelyne Trouillot’s Rosalie l’infâme as a Literary Understanding of History.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Niagara Falls
Apr 2022: « Zéphyr, conteur de la Relation dans An tan révolisyon de Maryse Condé. » Graduate conference, Department of French and Italian, Princeton University

Panels organized

Nov 2025: Moderator, “Migration, Displacement, and Spaces of Resistance,” FRITAS graduate symposium, UT Austin
Fall 2020: Moderator, “Sugar’s Traces,” a panel on two women artists and environmental justice in the Caribbean, Columbia Global Center, Reid Hall, Paris

Earlier teaching

2020–2022: Columbia University, Department of French: instructor of record for Introduction to French and Francophone Studies (Fall 2021) and Third-Year Grammar and Composition (Spring 2021); teaching assistant for French Theory in a Global Context (Spring 2022, for Profs. Madeleine Dobie and Thomas Dodman) and The Caribbean Digital (Fall 2020, for Profs. Kaiama L. Glover and Alex Gil)
2015–2018: Harvard University, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures: instructor of record for Beginning French I: French Identity through Visual Media and Intensive Beginner: Parisian Identity through Visual Media; teaching assistant for French Grammar and Phonetics and French New Wave Cinema; senior thesis tutor

Service

2024–2027: Member, Digital Humanities Committee, H-France
2025: Member, Collective Syllabus Review Committee for Contemporary Civilization, Center for the Core Curriculum, Columbia University
2024: Jury member, Best Undergraduate Essay Prize in Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University

Digital humanities

2019–2021: Managing Editor, archipelagos journal
: Contributor (Maryse Condé entry), In the Same Boats: Toward an Afro-Atlantic Intellectual Cartography
: Data work, CariDiScho: A Directory of Caribbean Digital Scholarship
: Member, xpmethod (Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research), Columbia University

Soraya Limare

Peer-reviewed articles & book chapters

Forthcoming

Caribbean Literature and Painting: Haiti

Thinking from the Caribbean

“Both Outside and Inside”: Senghor, Djebar and Laferrière at the Académie française

Coming Home: Narratives of Return in Francophone Literature

Utopia and Dystopia in Francophone Travel Narratives

Ecocritical Readings of the Francophone World

Contemporary Civilization

Littérature-monde: Contemporary French Literature in a Global Context