Center of Excellence

1825: France, Haiti, and the Debt of Independence – International Conference

October 10, 2025, 

Yale University hosted the international conference “1825: France, Haiti, and the Debt of Independence,” organized by Professors Marlene L. Daut and Pierre Saint-Amand, and supported in part by the Villa Albertine Centre of Excellence. Marking the bicentennial of King Charles X’s 1825 ordonnance imposing a massive indemnity on Haiti as the price of French recognition of its independence, the conference renewed critical discussion of one of the most consequential financial and moral injustices in modern history.

Bringing together historians, literary scholars, sociologists, and writers from the United States, France, and Haiti, the one-day event examined the origins, structure, and long-term consequences of the indemnity imposed under Charles X and accepted under duress by Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer. Participants explored how this unprecedented demand, that formerly enslaved people compensate former enslavers, shaped Haiti’s political and economic trajectory and continues to inform contemporary debates about reparations.

The keynote address was delivered by acclaimed Haitian writer Yanick Lahens, whose reflections situated the 1825 indemnity within broader historical and cultural frameworks. Invited speakers included Jean Casimir, Daniel Desormeaux, Malick Ghachem, Julia Gaffield, Chelsea Stieber, and Jean-Marie Théodat, who offered historical, philosophical, geopolitical, and literary perspectives on the enduring global significance of the so-called “independence debt.”

The conference fostered rigorous interdisciplinary dialogue and strengthened transatlantic scholarly exchange. It provided a timely forum to reassess the legacy of 1825 and to consider its implications for current discussions of historical justice and reparations.

Marie Ndiaye en conversation avec Morgane Cadieu et Jill Jarvis

October 17, 2023

Novelist, playwright, screenwriter, Marie NDiaye is one of the most important voices today. She visited us on the occasion of the publication of her latest novel, La Vengeance m’appartient, translated into English under the title Vengeance is Mine by Jordan Stump and published by Penguin Random House. She published her first novel in 1985, Quant au riche avenir; she received the Prix Femina in 2001 for Rosie Carpe (Minuit), the Goncourt in 2009 for Trois Femmes puissantes (Gallimard), and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her entire body of work in 2020. In 2003, her play Papa doit manger entered the repertoire of the Comédie Française. She also participated in writing the screenplay for the film White Material by Claire Denis and that of Saint-Omer, directed by Alice Diop. Marie NDiaye’s novels are populated by inimitable, implacable characters, enigmatic in their eloquence, fantastical in every sense of the word. Characters whose belonging is not self-evident, who wonder what harm they have caused and who have developed a “cautious” relationship with reality. Her novels are made of dreams, metamorphoses, unexplained wounds, strange landscapes, strong but ambiguous emotions and chiseled, labyrinthine sentence-paragraphs.

Baudelaire’s Worlds

September 28, 2023

This one-day conference celebrated, belatedly, the bicentenary of Charles Baudelaire’s birth (2021). The focus was less the poetics or the esthetics of the famous poet but taking the poetry “outside” of the familiar formal or romantic themes. Topics considered: the different worlds traversed by the poet, their figures (exoticism, voyages); are they compatible with the claims of modernity made by the poet (multitude, photography, and other media)? Is there a rewriting or translation of Baudelaire in other Francophone poetic traditions (the Caribbean and the Maghreb, the Indian Ocean)? A panel of international experts convened for these discussions.

Decentering Molière

April 14-16, 2022 

The Decentering Molière Conference organized under the leadership of Christophe Schuwey, and in collaboration with Sylvaine Guyot (Harvard/NYU) and Benoît Bolduc (NYU) celebrated Molière 400th birthday by bringing together leading specialists and practitioners from Europe and the United States to challenge our assumptions and our understanding of the most iconic French playwright.

North African Poetry in French.

November 5, 2021 

This event marked marked the  publication of Yale French Studies 137-138(Link is external) (2020), “North African Poetry in French.”   In recent years Maghrebi literature written in French has enjoyed increased critical attention, but less attention has been paid specifically to the genre of poetry. In an attempt to address this neglect, the editorial board of Yale French Studies decided to compile a double issue devoted to modern Francophone poetry in the Maghreb, called seventeen leading scholars, poets, and translators from the Maghreb, Europe, andNorth America, as well as the work of dozen visual artists from across North Africa, appeared in February 2021.

Arterialize Nature, Naturalize Art

April 30, 2021 

This international and interdisciplinary colloquium, convened under the paradigm of the environmental humanities, was organized by Yale Department of French Visiting Professor Dominique Brancher.  The event concentrated on the early modern period (16th to 18th century) and gathered historians of medicine, of literature, and historians of art. It examined the artificial re-composition and stylization of nature via herbaria, botanical illustrations, and anatomical tableaus.

Drafting Monique Wittig

October 2019

Morgane Cadieu (Yale) and Annabel Kim (Harvard) co-organized “Drafting Monique Wittig”, a 2-day international symposium on the feminist writer and theorist Monique Wittig (1935-2003). The goal was to celebrate the 50th anniversary or her landmark novel Les Guérillères, to showcase her Papers (recently acquired by the Yale Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library), and to define the legacy of Wittig’s experimental writing style and radical feminism. Twenty scholars from Canada, France, and the United States were invited.

French Renaissance Literary and Scholarly Legacies: a Conference in Honor of Ned Duval

December 7, 2018

The conference was meant as a send-off to retiring Professor Edwin (Ned) Duval who devoted so many years of service to the Yale French Department. It celebrated his outstanding contributions to the field of poetry and prose of the French Renaissance and featured many of his former students and illustrious colleagues from the US, Canada, and France. 

Yale French Studies 134  was published to go along with the conference.