JoAnn Michel

Born in Washington, D.C. to Haitian parents, she recognized the depth and strength of her unique background early on. Today, she embraces humanity, empathy, and diversity as ways of life. Her main goal is to produce public scholarship — be it "academic" or creative— that is based in radical care and mutual education for herself and anyone her work may reach. To realize this objective, she is documenting her graduate experience and much of her work on her public blog, Bad Blackadémique. As for her main research, JoAnn focuses on the self-representation of Black female intellectuals and creatives throughout the Francophone diaspora, and on postcolonial creolized identity and culture. By way of personal interests in creative writing (fiction and nonfiction), and the use of public work to combat underrepresentation, she is cultivating all her skill sets to establish herself as a versatile and creative public scholar.