Michelle Bumatay

Assistant Professor
Dr. Michelle Bumatay

Contact Information

Office Location
Diffenbaugh 303B
Email
mbumatay@fsu.edu
Program
French
Office Hours

MW 1-2 pm

Assistant Professor of French and the French Graduate Advisor, Michelle Bumatay, (PhD, UCLA) specializes in African Francophone literature and visual culture as well as contemporary France. Her forthcoming book, On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power, explores the diversity of comics in French by Black artists and authors. She is the 2015 recipient of the Annual Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award for her conference paper, "Notre histoire and Madame Livingstone: Travels in Time" and she has published in Contemporary French Civilization, Études francophones, European Comic Art, Alternative Francophone, Research in African Literatures, and Francosphères. She is also the organizer of the Winthrop-King Institute’s Global Africas series.

Research Interests

  • African Francophone literature, culture, and history
  • 20th & 21st Century French & Francophone Studies
  • Film, Media, and Comics Studies
  • Postcolonial theory
  • Migration Studies

Courses Taught

  • Senegal: Past and/as Present
  • (Post)Colonial Migration
  • Education and Identity Formation in Francophone Africa
  • French Cinema
  • Contemporary France
  • Introduction to Global French Studies (graduate seminar)

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • “Comics as Commemoration? The tirailleurs sénégalais and World War I.” Francosphères 10.1 (2021) 63-77.
  • “BD reportage or Exotic Travel Journal?: L’Afrique de papa and the Intermedial Gaze.” Études Francophones 32 (2020) 13-35.
  • “African Bande Dessinée Festivals & Competitions: Participation, Patronage, and Performance.” Research in African Literatures 50.2 (2019) 35-48.
  • “The 4th Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award-Winning Essay: Notre histoire and Madame Livingstone: travels in time.” Contemporary French Civilization 42.2 (2017) 141-169.
  • “Postcolonial Interjections: Jean-Philippe Stassen Illustrates Heart of Darkness and We Killed Mangy-Dog.” Alternative Francophone 1.8 (2015) 18-36.
  • “Humor as a Way to Re-Image and Re-Imagine Gabon and France in La vie de Pahé and Dipoula.” European Comic Art 5.2 (2012) 45–66.
  • Michelle Bumatay and Hannah Warman, “Illustrating Genocidaires, Orphans, and Child Soldiers in Central Africa.” Peace Review 24.3 (2012) 332-339.
  • “La collaboration à distance: Entretien avec Alain Mabanckou.” Paroles gelées 25. 1 (2009) 27-34.

Book Chapters

  • “The Feminine Plural in Africa and the Diaspora: Quartets of Women in Aya de Yopougon and La vie d’Ébène Duta.” Drawing (in) the Feminine: Bande Dessinée and Women, ed. by Margaret C. Flinn (The Ohio State University Press, 2024) 124-141.
  • “BD Reportage or Exotic Travel Journal? L’Afrique de papa and the Intermedial Gaze.” Intermediality in French-Language Comics & Graphic Novels, eds. Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, and Fabrice Leroy (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2022) 101-125. (expanded version of earlier article)
  • “Picturing the (Silent) History of Immigration in France and in French Bandes Dessinées,” in Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis, ed. Nhora Serrano (Routledge, 2021) 149-161.
  • “Plural Pathways, Plural Identities: Jean-Philippe Stassen’s ‘Les Visiteurs de Gibraltar,’” in Postcolonial Comics: Texts, Events, Identities, eds. Benita Mehta and Pia Mukherji (Routledge, 2015) 29-43.

Book Reviews

  • “Review of The Performance of Listening in Postcolonial Francophone Culture by Jennifer Solheim.” Contemporary French Civilization 45.2 (2020) 258-260.
  • “Review of La fabrique des classiques africains: Écrivains d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone (1960-2012) by Claire Ducournau.” H-France Review 18.94 (2018).
  • “Review: The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art.” Cinema Journal 56.2 (2017) 155-160.

Public Writing and Media