John Walsh

Education

• PhD, Romance Languages & Literatures, Harvard University (2005)
• MA, Romance Languages & Literatures, Harvard University (1999)
• BA, Amherst College (1993)

Research Interests & Fields of Study

Professor Walsh’s teaching and research interests include Caribbean Studies, especially the literature and history of Haiti, Francophone African Literature, and the Environmental Humanities. His current project, on climate fictions around the Global South, considers how the colonial history of climate change informs much contemporary cultural production on questions of migration and mobility, urban development and infrastructure, extraction of oil and minerals, and socio-economic inequality.

His first book, Free and French in the Caribbean: Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire and Narratives of Loyal Opposition (Indiana UP, 2013), is a work of literary and historical analysis of the texts of Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire and the two events that defined them, the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and the transformation of Martinique from French colony to overseas department (1946). Free and French in the Caribbean makes two central claims: the revolution and departmentalization share a deep connection, despite a narrative that long opposed Haitian independence to the assimilation of Martinique into France; and the writings of both statesmen-authors reveal the colonial origins of French republicanism. The book proposes a narrative filiation between Toussaint and Césaire in order to problematize the apparent union of universal rights and sovereignty that supports the republican principle of “Free and French,” a phrase pronounced in the first French abolition of slavery in 1794 and reiterated in Toussaint’s 1801 Constitution.

His second book, Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982-2017 (Liverpool UP, 2019), argues that contemporary Haitian literature historicizes the political and environmental problems brought to the surface by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti by building on texts of earlier generations, especially at the end of the Duvalier era (1957-1986) and its aftermath. Informed by Haitian studies and models of postcolonial ecocriticism, the book conceives of literature as an “eco-archive,” or a body of texts that depicts ecological change over time and its impact on social and environmental justice. Focusing equally on established and less well-known authors, the book contends that the eco-archive challenges future-oriented, universalizing narratives of the Anthropocene and the global refugee crisis with portrayals of different forms and paths of migration and refuge within Haiti and around the Americas.

Professor Walsh has advised graduate dissertations and undergraduate honors theses in interdisciplinary projects on many forms of cultural production and on a range of topics, including migration, extractivism, transnational identity, cultural sovereignty. He enjoys collaborating with colleagues and students in the department and across the Humanities to organize lectures and conferences that bring distinguished scholars, writers, and artists to Pitt.

Teaching

• Reading French
• Speaking French
• Writing French
• The French Atlantic
• Global French
• Contemporary Haitian Literature
• Global Fictions of Climate Change (in English)
• The Environmental Imaginary of the Francophone Caribbean Novel (Graduate)
• Mapping Afropea (Graduate)
• Caribbean Literature in the Anthropocene (Graduate)
• Theories of the Global (Graduate)
• Metropoles and Megacities (Graduate)
• Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Graduate)
• Climates of the Global South (Graduate)

Selected Publications

- “Imagining Historical Force and Climate Forcings in Contemporary Stories of Migration.” Oxford Handbook of Literature and Migration. Eds. Hadji Bakara, Josephine McDonagh, and Charlotte Sussman. Forthcoming in fall 2025.

- “The Spectral Climates of ‘Emerging Senegal’ in Mati Diop’s Atlantique.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (October 2024).

- “Média / Mediums.” Editor’s Introduction (with Giuseppina Mecchia). Contemporary French and Francophone Studies/SITES 27.3 and 27.4 (2023): 321-325.

- “Jean-Claude Charles, Chronicler of the Blues au long cours.” Jean-Claude Charles: A Reader’s Guide, Martin Munro and Eliana Vagalau, eds. Liverpool University Press, Spring/Summer 2022, 129-146.

- “The Marvelous Life of a Haitian Refugee: James Noël’s Belle merveille.” “Refugees between Aesthetics and Politics.” Special Issue of Crossings: A Journal of Migration and Culture 12.1 (2021): 361-377.

- “Haïti, le pays du Quattro? L’imaginaire de l’environnement urbain de Douces déroutes, ou Yanick Lahens et le spectacle de l’inégalité.” Cahiers d’Outre-Mer 279 (2019): 193-213.

- “From Buchenwald to Port-au-Prince: Becoming Haitian in the Holocaust.” French Forum 44.1, “The Holocaust in French and Francophone Studies.” Helena Duffy, ed. (Spring 2019)

- Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982-2017 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019) 264 pp.

- Free and French in the Caribbean: Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire and Narratives of Loyal Opposition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013) 193 pp.

Walsh has published additional articles and book reviews in a number of journals, including Small Axe, The French Review, Research in African Literatures, Transition, and American Historical Review.
 

Honors and Awards

University of Pittsburgh (2013-present):

• University of Pittsburgh (2013-present):

• Humanities Center Faculty Fellowship, 2022-2023

• Hewlett International Grant Program

• Global Studies, Migrations Initiative Travel Grant

• CLAS Faculty Research Grant

• Humanities Center Collaborative Research Grant

• Dietrich School, Faculty Scholarship and Research Program Grant (FSRP), 2014

• Dietrich School, Type I Research Grant

• European Studies Center, Faculty Research Grant

Professional Affiliations

MLA, HSA, 20th-21st Century French and Francophone Studies, SFPS