Corine Labridy

CORINE LABRIDY (she/elle) is a native Guadeloupean, a translator, and an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Francophone, Italian, & Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

She is a co-founder of the collective Kwazman Vwa, a digital humanities project that invites Caribbean authors and scholars to discuss their latest works — guests have included Emelie Prophète, Jean D’Amérique, Jessica Oublié, and Michaela Danjé. She is also the assistant editor for Imaginaries, an online publication affiliated with H-France that is concerned with the many ways that literature and history can and do intersect. She has written for Public Books, Small Axe, sx salon, and the CLR James Journal. Some of her most recent works have been attentive to the Afrofuturistic turn in Martinican and Guadeloupean literatures.

Her current book project, tentatively titled Dystopia Station, explores the proliferation of dystopian tropes in contemporary Antillean arts and literature and illuminates why they are particularly suited to confront the many crises —environmental, social, and cultural — that have rocked the French Caribbean in recent years. Her second book project focuses on black femme stand-up comedians, to suggest that their routines and public presence not only expand the boundaries of national humor but also challenge the République française universelle’s tight conception of national identity.