Eileen Julien
Biography
Eileen Julien is director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) and a professor of Comparative Literature, French and Italian, and African Studies. Her primary teaching and research interests are the literatures and cultures of Africa, the Americas, and France in their interrelationships. Among her publications, we find themes such as Josephine Baker's French films of the 1930s, the Présence Africaine conference held at the Sorbonne in 1956; gender and nationalism in the works of Wole Soyinka and Mariama Bâ; the romance of Africa in narratives by African American women; the art of making New Orleans gumbo, and the "extroverted" African novel. She is the author also of African Novels and the Question of Orality (1992), Travels with Mae: Scenes from a New Orleans Girlhood (2009), and co-editor of The Locations and Dislocations of African Literature: A Dialogue Between Humanities and Social Science Scholars (2016). Recipient of Bunting Institute (Radcliffe College), Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, she was founding director (2003-05) of the West African Research Center (Dakar, Senegal), and co-founder of the New Orléans Afrikan Film and Arts Festival (2008-12).
