About

Bénédicte Boisseron is a Professor of Afroamerican & African Studies at the University of Michigan, where she also serves as the Chair of the Department. She specializes in black diaspora studies, francophone studies, and animal studies. She holds an M.A. in English from Université Denis Diderot in Paris, France, and a Ph.D. in French and Francophone Studies from the University of Michigan. Boisseron is the author of 'Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora,' which investigates the exilic literature of Caribbean-born and Caribbean-descent writers questioning their cultural obligations from their new locations in North America. Her recent book, 'Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question,' explores the relationship between race and animals in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, drawing on debates about black life and animal rights. She has received numerous fellowships, including an Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellowship, an Animals & Society Institute Research Fellowship, and a 2022 Guggenheim fellowship. Currently, she teaches courses such as 'Food Literacy for All' and is actively engaged in research and teaching within her areas of expertise.

Research topics

• Art
• Philosophy
• Aesthetics
• Sociology
• Literature
• Epistemology
• Art history
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Theology
• History

Selected publications

• Afro-Dog

  Interseções Revista de Estudos Interdisciplinares · 2026-01-13

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Bénédicte Boisseron analisa a interação histórica da população negra nos Estados Unidos com cães — desde a escravidão até os atuais protestos do movimento Black Lives Matter — e oferece um prisma por meio do qual a percepção racial, as noções de bondade ou maldade inerentes e a lei podem ser investigadas mais a fundo.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 4 Digidogs and the Science Fiction of Blackness

  New York University Press eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Art history
  PublisherDOI

• Joshua Bennett, <i>Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man</i>

  American Literary History · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Philosophy
  • Aesthetics
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Terre(s) promise(s)

  Classiques Garnier · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access

  La terre promise biblique a fait l’objet d’un remarquable investissement dans tous les champs de la connaissance. Ce livre propose, dans une approche croisant littérature et sciences humaines d’en explorer la richesse et la fécondité, en termes d’imaginaires et d’expériences.

  PublisherDOI

• Jesmyn Ward’s Dog Bite: Mississippi Love and Death Stories

  Palgrave studies in animals and literature · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • History
  • Art
  PublisherDOI

• The Animal and African American History

  2019-02-26 · 1 citations

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding

  From the Middle Passage to the Black Lives Matter movement today, the animal carries a long-standing tradition of intersecting with African American life in American history. The proximity between the animal and the African American subject, which points back to the chattel (etymologically affiliated with cattle) status of the slave in America, carries modern ramifications that are increasingly being addressed in scholarships and publications. The “animal turn,” which refers to the fast-growing interest in human-animal relationships across the humanities and social sciences, has opened a new platform for questions of race and the nonhuman within the context of an America impacted by slavery. This article retraces the itinerary of the animal presence alongside the black subject in American history and includes key concepts and authors related to animal studies and black studies. The resources are divided into five parts. The first focuses on Intersectionality, the theoretical apparatus that has enabled scholars to establish connections among gender, racial, and species discrimination. The intersectional approach initially appeared within a litigious legal framework in the United States, as it was used to address the combination of racism and sexism. The concept has since expanded to include other forms of oppression, including so-called speciesism, a form of discrimination against animals said to be analogous to sexism and racism. The second part focuses on the literature that has addressed, and at times questioned, the practice of analogizing animals with blacks. Though it is not new—it was part of a 19th-century scientific racism discourse that justified slavery—the analogizing practice has more recently been used to compare the condition of black slaves then with the modern exploitation of animals. The third segment revisits the historical role of watchdogs used as a repressive tool against blacks in American history from the plantation era in the American South to the race riots and demonstrations of the 20th and 21st centuries. The fourth part centers on the relation between breed specific legislation and institutionalized racism in America, specifically on pit bulls and African Americans. The fifth part deals with the prominent contribution of blacks in the history of horse managing and horse racing in the American South, first, as slaves and, following the Civil War and into the Jim Crow Era, as trainers.

  PublisherDOI

• The “Dreaded Comparison” Revisited: Animal and Black Human Rights

  A Companion to World Literature · 2019-12-19

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter looks at the intersection between human and animal rights within the context of the French and Haitian Revolutions. As Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies in 1802, France turned to the question of animal rights as a diversion from, but also a bridge to, the more pressing issue of human rights in the post‐1789 era. The Code Noir helps us understand to what extent slave and animal law serve a similar purpose of hiding the overall barbaric nature of the French deemed unfit for the Enlightenment.

  PublisherDOI

• Frontmatter

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2018-08-25

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question

  2018-08-14 · 51 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  The animal-rights organization PETA asked "Are Animals the New Slaves?" in a controversial 2005 fundraising campaign; that same year, after the Humane Society rescued pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while black residents were neglected, some declared that white America cares more about pets than black people. These are but two recent examples of a centuries-long history in which black life has been pitted against animal life. Does comparing human and animal suffering trivialize black pain, or might the intersections of racialization and animalization shed light on interlinked forms of oppression?In Afro-Dog, Bénédicte Boisseron investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life. She analyzes the association between black civil disobedience and canine repression, a history that spans the era of slavery through the use of police dogs against protesters during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to today in places like Ferguson, Missouri. She also traces the lineage of blackness and the animal in Caribbean literature and struggles over minorities’ right to pet ownership alongside nuanced readings of Derrida and other French theorists. Drawing on recent debates on black lives and animal welfare, Afro-Dog reframes the fast-growing interest in human–animal relationships by positioning blackness as a focus of animal inquiry, opening new possibilities for animal studies and black studies to think side by side

  PublisherDOI

• 4. Dog Ownership in the Diaspora

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2018-08-25

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Yolaine Parisot

  Université Paris-Est Créteil

  3 shared

• Frieda Ekotto

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  2 shared

• Catherine Le Pelletier

  2 shared

• Jean-Georges Chali

  Université des Antilles

  2 shared

• Nicole Brissac

  2 shared

• Lise Gauvin

  Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal

  2 shared

• Richard-Viktor Sainsily-Cayol

  2 shared

• Laura Carvigan-Cassin

  Université des Antilles

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Ph…
• Honorable Mention from the Caribbean Studies Association for…
• Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellowship
• Animals & Society Institute and Animal Studies Program Resea…
• 2022 Guggenheim fellowship