Roxane is a French woman from Paris, proud of her Martinican roots. She is a fifth year Ph.D. student in the French Department. She obtained her M.A. in French and Francophone Literature from Vanderbilt University in 2013. She also has a background in Anglophone studies and American History (University of Paris VII).

Her dissertation,Forbidden Identity: Exposing Taboos in Caribbean Literature and Culture, aims at demonstrating how taboos prove instructive to understanding the former Caribbean colonies’ ambivalent relationship with France, the colonial and hegemonic center.  She contends that the expression of taboo in Caribbean literature and culture stems from the reiterated traumas of slavery, colonization and the failure of departmentalization—shocks that have affected all aspects of Francophone Caribbean social life, culture and identity.

Roxane is a recipient of Vanderbilt’s 2016 College of Arts and Science Summer Research Award. The award financed her research trip to Martinique and Guadeloupe where she was able to do archival research at the Schoelcher Library and the Departmental Archives in Fort de France and at the Departmental archives and LAMERCA in Basse-Terre.

Her main research interests include: Taboos in Caribbean literature, more particularly homosexuality, race and politics in the French Caribbean and Haiti.

Other research interests: Women and Gender Studies; Feminism (with a particular focus on the female body, its depiction and the way it is used in French and Francophone literature); Black France.

Roxane’s CV: Pajoul_CV

Contact information: roxane.pajoul@vanderbilt.edu