This Caribbean Born Professor Is Now A Named Chair At This Maine College

News Americas, BOSTON, MA, Fri. Mar. 5, 2021: A Caribbean-born professor was recently one of 8 appointed as a named chair in recognition of her achievements as a scholar and educator.

Martinique born professor, Hanétha Vété-Congolo, has been named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine.

A French Black studies and French postcolonial studies scholar whose research spans African, Caribbean, French, and gender and women’s studies, her most recent book, Nous sommes Martiniquaises. Pawòl en bouches de femmes châtaignes: une pensée existentialiste noire sur la question des femmes, was published in 2020 (L’Harmattan), while Discours AntillaisE is forthcoming in 2021 with Éditions Complicités in addition to two coedited chapter books. A poet, Vété-Congolo has published Avoir et Être : ce que j’Ai, ce que je Suis (Le Chasseur Abstrait, 2009) and Mon parler de Guinée (L’Harmattan, 2015). Her unpublished collection of poetry, Womb of a Woman, was shortlisted for the 2015 Small Axe Literary Competition.

“It is an honor to have the significance of one’s work recognized by an institution like Bowdoin,” Vété-Congolo said of the appointment. “Doing Black studies in French has always been like existing within the most invisible part of a non-nameable and non-identified object. Students have nevertheless fueled my energy and passion. They give meaning and direction to much of what I do.”

Vété-Congolo, who arrived at Bowdoin in 2001, is also president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and Membre d’honneur of the Groupe de Recherche et d’Études sur les Noirs d’Amerique Latine of the Université de Perpignan Via Domitia in France.

She teaches courses on culture, literature, philosophy, critical thought, gender and women from the French speaking world of the Caribbean and Africa and has organized several national and international conferences.

Vété-Congolo earned a BA, MA, DEA, and her PhD at the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane.

The Longfellow professorship was established by the College’s governing boards in 1876. The appointment was effective immediately and was announced by Bowdoin President Clayton S. Rose in a letter.