Johanna Montlouis-GabrielAssistant Professor of Decolonial Pedagogy

Johanna Montlouis-Gabriel completed her PhD in Romance languages at The University of Georgia (2018). Prior to joining the faculty at Emory University in August 2024, Dr. Montlouis-Gabriel held positions at North Carolina State University and The Ohio State University.  Dr. Montlouis-Gabriel's  research focuses on afrofeminism in contemporary French artistic, cultural and digital productions. 

Her current book project, titled The Afrofeminist Creative Praxis of French Women, analyzes theatre, film, literature and digital media to illuminate the process through which Black female authors, actresses, subjects and filmmakers challenge stereotypes associated with portrayals of Black women and their bodies in postcolonial France and its media and propose new pedagogical interventions in an ostensibly color-blind country that seeks to enforce a universalist agenda.

Her articles have been published in a number of leading journals including The French Review, Contemporary French Civilization and Etudes Littéraires Africaines. She was also the recipient of the prestigious Camargo Foundation Fellowship in the Spring of 2022. 

Her research interests revolve around: Afrofeminism; Theater and Performance; Literature; Digital Media; Blogging; Graphic Novels; Afrofuturism; Documentary Films.

Research projects include: 

• « Cartographier l’art noir »: co-PI with Dr. Abigail E. Celis (Université de Montréal) supported by the “Insight  Development Grants,” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada is seeking to document, examine and understand the aesthetic and political concerns expressed by the artistic production of post-2005 Black French visual artists.
• « Tales from the Crypt »: co-PI with Dr. Mónica Lugo-Vélez (North Carolina State University) isseeking to analyze new digital media studies on death and dying rituals in the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean.

Interested in working together? Please follow this link. 

« Coeurs à corps »: le théâtre afroféministe de Rébecca Chaillon et la représentation des femmes noires, inMarianne est aussi noire, Editions Le Seuil, pp. 245- 257.  Forthcoming October 2024. 

“Snippets of Pleasure: Black French Women Writing & Expressing Desire,” in CFC Intersections, vol. 1, n°1 (December 2022): 59-69.

“Tracées and Womxn at Work in Mariannes Noires by Mame-Fatou Niang and Katie Nielsen” in edited volume 'Taking up Space': Womxn at Work in Contemporary France. The University of Wales Press.(October 2022): 310-326. 

“The Dismantling of Afropean Families in Léonora Miano’s Afropean Soul”, in edited volume Transnational Fictions: Contemporary Africana Women’s Narratives, Routledge Press, (September 2021): 188-201.

“Reading “Hairstories” and “Hairitages’” in Léonora Miano and Rokhaya Diallo’s Works,” ELA, Etudes Littéraires Africaines, no. 47, (August 2019): 85-99.

“Ouvrir la voix (Amandine Gay): Opening One’s Eyes to Today’s Afropeans,” Essays in French Literature and Culture, (October 2019): 109-125.

“Interview with Amandine Gay on “Ouvrir la voix”: Visibility and Representation in Afro-Feminine Landscape of France,” The French Review, 92(3), (March 2019): 180-189.

Reviews

“Ouvrir La Voix.” Esprit Créateur, vol. 58, no. 2, Summer 2018, 140.