Research
It all started when a professor in undergrad mentioned that Gauguin took a trip to the Caribbean.
As soon as I found out it was Martinique, I was sold. Ever since then I’ve been obsessed with learning more about the ways the island has been depicted in visual culture for the last 250 years.
My research focuses on images of Martinique in the long nineteenth century. I have a personal connection to the island—my maternal grandparents were from there—so it never gets old.
This material has also opened up avenues for future research on the nineteenth-century French colonial world beyond Martinique, especially in ways that nuance our understanding of how France viewed its colonies in the periphery.
Exotic and Familiar:
Constructing Martinique, 1763–1902
My dissertation examines images of Martinique from the end of the Seven Years' War until the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée. I am specifically interested in the ways in which the Caribbean island was paradoxically cast across different media as both a timeless, exotic locale and as a space with familiar imprints of France.
Bringing in a wide range of materials, from paintings to illustrated books, I hope to show how certain aspects of the island were emphasized while others were downplayed—resulting in visual conventions whose legacies are still visible today.
Publications
"Gauguin and Laval in Martinique," in Smarthistory, September 28, 2020.
Dust Specks on the Sea, Hunter East Harlem Gallery, 2018.
"Depictions of Martinique before Gauguin and Laval" to be published in a forthcoming Van Gogh Museum catalogue.
Presentations
"Palm Trees and Drydocks: The Tropical Landscape in Carvalho's Martinique Photographs and Their Afterlife in Ink" (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, May 21—23, 2020—postponed to 2021)
"Landscapes and Characters: Martinique in Nineteenth Century French Paintings and Prints" (Early Research Initiative Symposium 2019)
"Representations of Martinique in Nineteenth-Century Art" (Van Gogh Museum 2018)
"Slavery and Daily Life in Marius-Pierre Le Masurier’s Paintings of Martinique"(Early Research Initiative Symposium, 2018)
"Martinique's Dual Role in Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny's Voyage Pittoresque" (AHNCA Dahesh Symposium, 19 March 2018)
"The Productive Exotic: Depictions of Labor in the 19th Century Caribbean" (South and About!, 25 October 2017