Sam Jones

Sam Jones received his B.A. from Brown University in 2018 with a double major in Africana Studies and French Studies. In his undergraduate honors thesis, he argued that the works of African-American authors and artists represent a major influence on French society’s conception of race. The works of these authors and artists, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, simultaneously establish an archive of American racism which French society can turn to in order to relativize its colonial past and create a conversation around race and racism, thus providing an opening for Afro-French activists to share their experiences of discrimination at the hands of the supposedly color-blind and egalitarian French republic..

Sam’s research interests center on the exchanges between African-American and Afro-European communities. He is particularly interested in the ways in which the circulation of African American cultural productions influences conceptions of race throughout Europe and obscures the past and present conditions of an Afropean population. Sam is also interested in thinking through questions of Blackness in a transnational context, as opposed to solely through the lens of the nation-state. In addition to this research, he hopes to help re-think who and what is at the center of French Studies and re-imagine what the university and those within it can do, if anything, to serve the public at large.