Michelle Bumatay
Contact Information
By appointment only
Michelle Bumatay, (PhD, French and Francophone Studies, UCLA) is an Assistant Professor of French specializing in African Francophone literature and visual culture. Her current book project, Black Bandes Dessinées, 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
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
Articles and 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)
- “Comics as Commemoration? The tirailleurs sénégalais and World War I.” Francosphères vol. 10 no. 1 (2021) 63-77.
- “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.
- “BD reportage or Exotic Travel Journal?: L’Afrique de papa and the Intermedial Gaze,” in 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.
- “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.
- “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.
Public Writing and Media
- “Petite histoire des colonies françaises: Little Comics Speak Volumes.” Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in the Modern Francosphere Conference, Winthrop-King Institute of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Oct. 2021.
- “Interview with artist Pat Masioni.” YouTube uploaded 19 Oct. 2020.
- Aldama, Frederick Luis. “Michelle Bumatay Talks: Transnational African Comics & Global Questions of Black Identity!,” YouTube Uploaded by Frederick Luis Aldama 7 Oct. 2020.
- “Review of The Performance of Listening in Postcolonial Francophone Culture by Jennifer Solheim,” Contemporary French Civilization 45.2 (2020) 258-260.
- Bumatay, Michelle, and Joseph L. Underwood. “Focus: Ibrahima Dieye.” The View From Here: Contemporary Perspectives From Senegal, ed. Joseph L. Underwood (Joseph L. Underwood and the Kent State School of Art Collection & Galleries, 2018) 58-60.
- “Focus: Camara Guèye.” The View From Here: Contemporary Perspectives From Senegal, ed. Joseph L. Underwood (Joseph L. Underwood and the Kent State School of Art Collection & Galleries, 2018) 49-53.
- “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.