Marlene Daut is a Professor of French and African American Studies at Yale University.
Since graduating with her Ph.D. in 2009, Marlene has written four books, including Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool UP, 2015); Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017); Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press, 2023); and the forthcoming The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025). Additionally, she has authored much public-facing work on Haitian history and culture and has appeared in over a dozen magazines, newspapers, and journals including, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Essence, The Nation, and the LA Review of Books.
For Marlene, a strength of the English PhD program was its collaborative culture. Working with closely with faculty in 2006, she organized her first academic conference, "Transnationalism, Translation, Transnation: A Dialogue on the Americas."
She advises prospective and current students:
The path of least resistance is not always the path to greatest fulfillment... Don't worry about the paths those around you are taking and definitely do not simply go where others have already tread, which is to say, do not fall into taking the safe route. There are too many different avenues waiting to be explored to simply follow the herd.