Friday, March 22nd, 2024 Suzanne Simon Baptiste Louverture: Microbiography & the ‘Wife Of’

Description

A work in progress and the first of its kind, this presentation gives a sneak peek of Dr. Robin Mitchell’s forthcoming book based on Suzanne Simon Baptiste, also known as Madame Toussaint Louverture. Dr. Mitchell’s goal in this research is to bring Suzanne to the center stage and not in the shadow of her husband, Toussaint Louverture, where she has been stuck for most of history.

Robin Mitchell is an Associate Professor of European History in the Department of History at the University at Buffalo. She is a 19th century French historian, specializing in discourses about race, gender, and sexuality. Her work focuses on the white colonial fantasies, scandals, and crime imposed upon Black women’s bodies and voices when they were in metropolitan French spaces. Mitchell has published numerous journal articles, and her first book, Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Georgia Press, 2020), was named by the African American Intellectual History Society to its "The Best Black History books of 2020," and by The Guardian as one of "The Best Books About Sex" in 2021.