Marsha Jean-Charles

Marsha Jean-Charles earned her BA in African American Studies from Wesleyan University, her MA in African American Studies from Columbia University, and is pursuing a Ph.D in Africana Studies from Cornell University. While pursuing her Ph. D., Marsha taught Introduction to Africana Studies at SUNY Binghamton for the Spring 2016 semester.

Marsha Jean-Charles is interested in transnational literary studies of black women’s bildungsroman and immigration novels. She endeavors to research the cosmologies and revolutionary politics aroused from forced migration and statelessness. A Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, her undergraduate thesis, titled: Of Griottes & Pantomimes, is a work elucidating the place of Black Feminisms in the novels of Edwidge Danticat. In her Master’s thesis, titled: Embodying Goddesses: Edwidge Danticat’s Literary Revolution, she mixes historical narratives and two of Edwidge Danticat’s short stories to include the voices of revolutionary women in Haiti’s war for independence.

An organizer at her core she wishes to fuse her academic work with her activist work and expand understandings of the uses of literary and performance art as tools for activism. An alumna of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol (BroSis), she is currently also pursuing organizing work at BroSis. In this capacity, Marsha works as an educator in the Liberation Program and is the organization’s Lead Organizer.