People

Professor Maria Cristina Fumagalli

Professor
Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Professor Maria Cristina Fumagalli
  • Email

  • Telephone

    +44 (0) 1206 872610

  • Location

    5NW.4.13, Colchester Campus

Profile

Biography

Maria Cristina Fumagalli came to Essex in 1999 where she became Professor in the Department of \literature, Film, and Theatre Studies in 2011. In 2024 Maria Cristina was elected Fellow of the British Academy. In Spring 2025 she will be Visiting Scholar at Vassar College, US. Maria Cristina is the author of four monographs: Derek Walcott's Painters: A Life with Pictures (2023), the first book devoted to Derek Walcott's lifelong engagement with the visual arts; On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (2015), the first literary and cultural history which, bringing to the fore a compelling but, so far, largely neglected body of work, has the politics of borderline-crossing as well as the poetics of borderland-dwelling on Hispaniola at its core; Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa's Gaze (2009) which uses the myth of Medusa's gaze turning people into stone to describe the way North Atlantic modernity freezes its "others" into a state of perpetual backwardness that produces an ethnocentric narrative based on homogenization, vilification, and disempowerment that actively ignores what fails to conform to the story it wants to tell about itself; The Flight of the Vernacular: Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and the Impress of Dante (2001) which is not only a record of what Dante means to the two contemporary poets but also a cogent study of Heaney’s and Walcott’s attitude towards language and of their views on the function of poetry in our time. Maria Cristina the editor of Special Issue on Hispaniola After the Earthquake, BLAR (Bulletin of Latin American Research), 32.4 (2013) and Agenda: Special Issue on Derek Walcott (2002-2003) which includes more than sixty contributors and whose centre-piece is Epitaph for the Young, an extraordinary but forgotten poem in twelve cantos that Walcott privately published when he was a teenager and reprinted here for the first time since 1949. Maria Cristina is co-editor (with Bénédicte Ledent and Roberto Del Valle Alcalà), The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013) and (with Peter Hulme, Owen Robinson and Lesley Wiley), Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013). In 2006 she was one of the three investigators (with Peter Hulme and Owen Robinson) who secured funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the project American Tropics: Towards A Literary Geography and in April 2012 she was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (December 2012-December 2013) to complete her third monograph, On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (2015). On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic has been launched in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique and in the UK and you can hear and Maria Cristina Fumagalli discussing the book with Alejandra Bronfman on the New Books in Caribbean Studies website. You can see a short film made in collaboration with OBMICA in the Dominican Republic on the 80th anniversary of the 1937 massacre entitled La Frontera Dominico-Haitiana: Pasado y Presente on YouTube. On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is at the core of Maria Cristina's standalone Impact Case for REF2021 'Reconceptualizing troubled border relations: promoting cross-border collaboration, cooperation and solidarity between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the wake of the denationalization crisis in Hispaniola'. Maria Cristina's fourth monograph, Derek Walcott's Painters: A Life with Pictures (2023) was supported by a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust (2016-2019). You can read her blog on Derek Walcott and Peter Doig, Paramin, Morning (2016) for Wasafiri (17 December 2016). Maria Cristina's new project is entitled Painting the Caribbean 1850-1904. This collaborative project (with Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert) examines the understudied personal and artistic connections forged between a group of European, American, and Caribbean painters through travel and exposure to Caribbean reality at a crucial historical moment marked by socio-political, scientific, cultural, and artistic changes. Exploring in depth, for the first time, these dynamic and seminal connections, the project’s outcome, an interdisciplinary monograph entitled Painting the Caribbean (1850-1904), will advance our understanding of the history of representation of the region, its interconnections with the development of individual careers and major artistic movements, and will foreground the fundamental but neglected role of the Caribbean in modern art. This project is supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2023-24). A second interconnected volume for this project, entitled Repainting/Revisualising the Caribbean: Engaging the Past, (Re)Mapping the Future, looks at the reverberations of the work of the painters discussed in Painting the Caribbean (1850-1904) in contemporary Caribbean (both from the region and the diaspora) and Black American visual artists is also in preparation. Maria Cristina has written on (amongst others) Jacques Stephen Alexis, Dante Alighieri, Erna Brodber, Maryse Condé, Junot Díaz, Carlos Esteban Deive, Edwige Danticat, Seamus Heaney, Victor Hugo, Gary Klang, Gabriel García Márquez, Jean Métellus, Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, Grace Nichols, Jean-Noël Pancrazi, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, René Philoctète, Jean-Baptiste Picquenard, Freddy Prestol Castillo, Jean Rhys, Manuel Rueda, M.P. Shiel, Madison Smartt Bell, Michael Thelwell, Evelyne Trouillot, Salomé Henriquez de Ureña, Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, Derek Walcott, the directors Israel Cárdenas & Laura Amelia Guzmán, Perry Henzell, and Angel Muñiz, and the artists Polibio Díaz and Karmadavis. She has published in Agenda, Anales del Caribe; Ariel: A Review of International English Literature; Bulletin of Latin American Studies (BLAR); Cambridge Quarterly; Caribbean Quarterly; Commonwealth: Essays and Studies; Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos; Entertext; Irish University Review; Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies; Journal of Caribbean Literatures; Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Haitian Studies, Journal of West Indian Literature, Letture Classensi, New Comparison; New West Indian Guide; Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Languages and Culture; Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism; Wasafiri. She has contributed chapters/essays to many edited collections. Maria Cristina has co-produced, with Penny Woollard, the following plays by Derek Walcott: the UK première of Moon-Child (30 April 2011), directed by Derek Walcott; Pantomime (3-5 May 2012) directed by Derek Walcott; and the World première of O Starry Starry Night (2-4 May 2013) directed by Derek Walcott and Barbara Peirson (see websites below). Supervised PhD Theses: Laurel Eberle -Paramen, Pistarckles and Poppy Shows: Stories of Madness, Resistance, and Community in the Virgin Islands (2022) Yit Ho Joshua Ang -Fantastic Reality: Dystopia and Eco-Cosmopolitanism in Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, and David Mitchell (2021) Rasha Alshalabi -Dominican-American Fiction between 1990 and 2010 (2016) Dennis L. M. Lewis -Speech, Voice and Parable: Reading and Writing through Auden (letters to Auden, a reading of his poems, and a serial poem of Barak Hussein Obama (2016) Penny Woollard -Derek Walcott's Americas: the United States of America and the Caribbean (2015) Sean Seeger -History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake: Non-linear Temporality in the Works of James Joyce and Derek Walcott (2015) Hazem Fadel -Contested Cities in Arab Writing (1969-1989) (2014) Mariya Ustymenko -Genuine Mess: Extratextuality in the Work of four American Women Poets (2013) William Kingsbury -Narrativising Afganistan: Outsider and Afghan Perspectives in Modern Fiction and Films (2013) Ben Thomas Jefferson -'If I listen, I can hear': Derek Walcott and Place (2012) Anne Schroder -Zombie Fictions: Possession, Consumption and Zombification in Recent Caribbean and U.S. literature (2012) Hanan Abou HatabArab Shakespeare: Six Arab Adaptations of Hamlet (2011) Malika Rebai Maamri,Cross-Cultural and Ideological Perceptions of the Other in: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe and Assia Djebar (2009 - joint supervision with the University of Algiers).

Qualifications

  • BA Milan

  • PhD Sheffield

Appointments

University of Essex

  • Professor, Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex (2011 - present)

Research and professional activities

Research interests

Caribbean literatures, art and cinema

Open to supervise

literature and place

Open to supervise

border studies (especially concerning the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic)

Open to supervise

literature and the environment

Open to supervise

migration and literature

Open to supervise

human rights and literature

Open to supervise

literature and the visual arts

Open to supervise

contemporary poetry

Open to supervise

literary and filmic rewritings, adaptations, translation and comparative studies

Open to supervise

contemporary Caribbean and US relations (especially regarding the Dominican and Haitian Diasporas)

Open to supervise

the work of Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Junot Diaz, and Edwidge Danticat

Open to supervise

postcolonial studies

Open to supervise

women writing

Open to supervise

Italian cinema and literature

Open to supervise

Current research

Maria Cristina is currently writing her fourth monograph provisionally entitled Derek Walcotts Painters which focuses on the Nobel laureate Derek Walcotts relationship with the visual arts and for which she has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust (2016-2019).

Conferences and presentations

‘I nostri miti sono ignoranza, i loro letteratura’: decolonizzare mito ed epica: Derek Walcott e Omeros

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, IV Edizione Festival Civitas Educationis, Festival Civitas Educationis, Enna, Italy, 13/11/2024

“Las Mujeres son frontera”: políticas fronterizas, migración y desnacionalización la República Dominicana”

Invited presentation, IV Congreso Internacional El Caribe en sus Literaturas y Culturas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, 13/7/2024

“‘A perfection to West Indian Things’: Derek Walcott’s early years in St Lucia”

Caribbean Society Association Annual Conference, St Lucia, 6/7/2024

“Painting the Caribbean: 1850-1904”

Caribbean Society Association Annual Conference, St Lucia, 6/7/2024

“East of Haiti:Voices from the Dominican Republic”

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Online, 5/7/2024

“Painting the Caribbean: 1850-1904”

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Online, 4/7/2024

“La alternativa del Nuevo Mundo de Derek Walcott: memoria colonial, imágenes emblemáticas, y la “pequeña gente”

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, IV Congreso Internacional “El Caribe en sus Literaturas y Culturas”, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba,, Argentina, 15/3/2024

ARTE Y LITERATURA PARA LA TRANSFORMACIÓN:LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE NUEVAS NARRATIVAS PARA LA ISLA

Invited presentation, XII CONFERENCIA DE ESTUDIOS DE GÉNERO: Construcción de conocimientos para la igualdad, INTEC -, SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, 28/11/2023

‘‘Paint the ordinary for what it is’: Derek Walcott’s paintings’

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Stephen Lawrence Centre - De Montfort University, Leicester, 8/7/2023

Derek Walcott's Painters: A Life with Pictures

New book in Caribbean Studies - Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Stephen Lawrence Centre - Society for Caribbean Studies, Leicester, 7/7/2023

'Why Hispaniola Needs New Narratives'

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Stephen Lawrence Centre - De Montfort University, Leicester, 5/7/2023

The right to be understood and the right to understand oneself: genealogies and hospitality in Caryl Phillips’ Strange Fruit

Invited presentation, Caryl Phillips Genealogies, Université de Liège, 16/6/2023

Visual surprise, the ‘sigh’ of History, and naming/painting the Caribbean: Derek Walcott’s ecopoetics/Sorpresa visual, el ‘suspiro’ de la Historia, y nombrar/pintar el Caribe: la ecopoética de Derek Walcott

Invited presentation, IX Coloquio Internacional La Diversidad Cultural en el Caribe Paisajes, derechos de la naturaleza y ecopoéticas en el Caribe, Casa de las Américas, Habana, Cuba, 15/5/2023

Not only here but here: solidarity and sorority

Dominican Studies Association, Hostos Community College, New York, United States, 2/12/2022

“National Epics: The Dominican Republic”,

Invited presentation, National Epics, Moore Institute, Galway, Ireland webinar, 28/10/2022

“Narrative suturing and un-sutured wounds: Derek Walcott’s ‘American Muse’ and Walker Evans’s ‘Annie Mae Gudger’,

Society for Caribbean Studies 46th Annual Conference, Society for Caribbean Studies 46th Annual Conference, online, 7/7/2022

“Dar a luz: Haitian and Dominican Women of Haitian descent and the politics of ‘bordering’”

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference, Society for Caribbean Studies, online, 6/7/2022

Return to the Future: the Dominican Republic and Haiti post-Covid-19

Society for Caribbean Studies 44th Annual Conference, 9/7/2021

"Lifting the canvas from the museum” Derek Walcott’s Omeros

Society for Caribbean Studies 44th Annual Conference, 6/7/2021

Stranger Than Fiction: Opportunities for a New Narrative in Dominico-Haitian relations under Covid-19 and new preliminary on-the-ground research

Dominican Studies Association, The Bronx, United States, 5/12/2020

Humans and animals at the centre of the world: of pets, pests, pigs and shape-shifters

Dominican Studies Association, The Bronx, United States, 4/12/2020

“‘My main man's sea-smart Odysseus’: Homer, Derek Walcott, et Romare Bearden,

Invited presentation, Adaptations du texte littéraire américano-caraïbe: formes et enjeux, Schoelcher, Martinique, 20/11/2019

Border Narratives & Hispaniola

Invited presentation, Discover Culture - Public Lectures, Cork, Ireland, 27/9/2019

‘“Solidarity is Our Wealth”: Representing and Navigating the Transnational Neighbourhoods and Communities of Santo Domingo’

xploring the Transnational Neighbourhood Integration, Community, and Co-Habitation, UCD Humanities Institute, Dublin, Ireland, 25/9/2019

Smiling Sharks: Derek Walcott, Winslow Homer, and J.M.W. Turner

Slavery and its Afterlives: Blackness, Representation, Social Justice, Vision, London, United Kingdom, 8/7/2019

Formidable Things, Shocks, and Revelations’: Derek Walcott and Warwick Walcott Landscaping St Lucia

43rd Society for Caribbean Studies Conference (SCS) 3-5 July 2019., Institute for Black Atlantic Studies (IBAR), Preston, United Kingdom, 4/7/2019

Epics of the Caribbean: Derek Walcott's Omeros (and the shopkeeper’s view)

Invited presentation, Invited Seminar, Udine, Italy, 26/11/2018

Citizenship and migration: Santo Domingo before la sentencia

Invited presentation, 2018 Biennal Dominican Studies Association Conference, The Bronx, United States, 16/11/2018

Monsieur Seven Seas: A Tribute to Derek Walcott

Invited presentation, Monsieur Seven Seas: A Tribute to Derek Walcott - ticketed event, London, United Kingdom, 21/9/2018

Frescoes of the New World: Derek Walcott's Drums and Colours and Diego Rivera

Invited presentation, The Young Walcott - ticketed event, British Library, Knowledge Centre, London, United Kingdom, 13/7/2018

'"Great Painting is Beauty Without Speech": Derek Walcott and the Visual Arts'

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, International Conference in Tribute to Derek Walcott Invited Key-note, Alcala de Henares, Spain, 9/7/2018

‘If this were a portrait’: Derek Walcott, Harold Simmons, and Dunstan St Omer

Society for Caribbean Studies 42nd Annual Conference, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, United Kingdom, 5/7/2018

Urban borders: Santo Domingo before 2013

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Global Dominican: Politics, Economics and Cultural Production Invited Speaker; On the Edge singled out in the Call for Paper for its 'masterful reading' of border relations, Senate House, London, United Kingdom, 22/6/2018

‘America is more our country, than it is the whites--we have enriched it with our blood and tears’: David Walker, Derek Walcott and the African American experience.

Seamed By Its Own Bitter Juice: Voice, Visibility, Literacies, Eccles Center, British Library, London, United Kingdom, 20/6/2018

On the Edge - Book Launch - Casa del Caribe, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba

Invited presentation, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 13/6/2018

On the Edge - Book Launch -Casa de la Diversidad Cultural, Camaguey, Cuba

Invited presentation, Camaguey, Cuba, 11/6/2018

On the Edge - Book Launch Ignatio de Loyola - Social and Cultural Centre, Reina, Havana, Cuba

Invited presentation, Ignatio de Loyola - Social and Cultural Centre, Reina, Havana, Cuba, 8/6/2018

‘Those mornings when I imagined myself a painter’: Derek Walcott’s early years in St Lucia.

43rd Conference Caribbean Studies Association, Havana, Cuba, 7/6/2018

On the Edge - Book Launch, Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba

Invited presentation, Havana, Cuba, 5/6/2018

‘My name is not Haití, it is Janvier and I have my cédula’: Cristo Rey (2013) and the representation of ethnic and racial diversity in the Dominican Republic.

43rd Caribbean Society Association, Havana, Cuba, 4/6/2018

‘“A vehemence that is the same as love”: Derek Walcott and Peter Doig’s Morning Paramin’,

Invited speaker, School of Literature, Language & Linguistics, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 8/11/2017

La frontera dominico-haitiana: pasado y presente

Invited presentation, La frontera dominico-haitiana: pasado y presente - Public Speaker - Even co-organized with OBMICA, Santo Domngo which also co-produced this video related to various activities carried out to commemorate the 1937 massacre in the Dominican borderland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruDo3mjfpU, Centro Cultural Pablo Duarte, Comendador, Dominican Republic, 6/10/2017

Perspectivas literarias y artisticas de Haiti y Republica Dominicana y la masacre de 1937

Invited presentation, 80 años de la masacre de 1937: Reconstruyendo la memoria - Invited Speaker, Sala Julio Ravelo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 10/2017

M.C. Fumagalli, Derek Walcott at Essex: A Tribute, Society for Caribbean Studies Conference 2017, University of Essex, 5 July 2017.

Invited presentation, Invited to deliver this tribute by the Chair of SCS, Colchester, United Kingdom, 5/7/2017

M.C. Fumagalli, Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Orchestrating the Verbal and the Visual in Morning Paramin (2016), Society for Caribbean Studies Conference 2017, University of Essex, 5 July 2017.

Colchester, United Kingdom, 1/7/2017

In Transit - Denouncing Insecurity in the Dominican Republic

Caribbean In/Securities and Creativity: Diasporic Dialogues,, The Knowledge Centre, London, United Kingdom, 26/6/2017

From the 1937 Massacre to Civil Genocide: Continuities and Discontinuities from Manuel Rueda's Bienvenida y la Noceh: Cronicas de Montecristi to Karmadavis's Visitante (A)Temporal

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, 6th edition of Coloqui Internacional - La Diversidad Cultural en el Caribe: Memoria y Conflcto de Frontera, 22-26 May 2017 Key-note Invited Speaker, Havana, Cuba, 22/5/2017

The 1937 Masacre 80 Years Later: Language, Genocide, Reconciliation in the Dominican Republic

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, The 1937 Masacre 80 Years Later: Language, Genocide, Reconciliation in the Dominican Republic Key-note Invited Speaker, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 7/5/2017

M.C. Fumagalli, Relation vs Paragon: Derek Walcott ekphrastic practices in Morning Paramin (2016), CEREP (Centre dEnseignement et de Recherche en Etudes Postcoloniales / Centre for Teaching and Research in Postcolonial Studies) - Liege, Belgium, 6 March 2017.

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker, Liege, Belgium, 6/3/2017

Derek Walcott's Lapeyrouse Wall

Invited presentation, Voices Celebrating Derek Walcott - Invited Speaker for Nobel Week, National Celebration of Derek Walcott's Nobel Prize for Literature, Government House, Castries, Saint Lucia, 23/1/2017

M.C. Fumagalli, Derek Walcott: Going Beyond the Literary - Methods for Caribbean Interdisciplinarity American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference 2017, Utrecht University, 6-9 July 2017.

Utrecht, Netherlands, 2017

M.C. Fumagalli, One of those things / that a corbeau passes: Rethinking belonging with Derek Walcott's and Peter Doig's Morning, Paramin, Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba, 1 June 2017.

Invited Speaker, Havana, Cuba, 2017

M.C. Fumagalli, Migration forcee et Hispaniola:perspectives litteraires et artistiques, Festival 4 Chemins, Port au Prince, Haiti, 2nd December 2016

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker, Port au Prince, Haiti, 2/12/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, Le mystere de l'espoir: passe, present et futur, Festival 4 Chemins, Port au Prince, Haiti, 29 November 2016 (broadcast in its entirety by Radio Tele Ginen).

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker, Port au Prince, Haiti, 29/11/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, launch of On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (LUP 2015) CRPLC- Amphithetre Sellaye, Campus de Schoelcher, Martinique, 17 October 2016. Available online (in French): Manioc- Biblioteqhe Numerique Caraibe Amazonie Plateau des Guyanes: http://www.manioc.org/fichiers/V16272.

Book Launch, Martinique, Haiti, 17/10/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, Penser les frontieres et les appartenances depuis la Carabe et dans les Ameriques, Haiti - Republique Dominicaine : La fabrique des apatrides, Round Table, CRPLC- Amphithetre Sellaye, Campus de Schoelcher, Martinique, 17 October 2016. Available online (in French): Manioc- Biblioteqhe Numerique Caraibe Amazonie Plateau des Guyanes: http://www.manioc.org/fichiers/V16274

Invited Speaker at Round Table, Martinique, Haiti, 17/10/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, Artistes contemporains, migration et denationalisation en Hispaniola, Memorial Acte - Festival International du Film des Droits de l'Homme de Guadeloupe, 12 October 2016.

Invited Speaker at the Festival, Guadeloupe, 12/10/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, Au bord de l'espoir: Haiti et la Republique Dominicaine, ECMEA-CRILLASH - Campus du Camp Jacob - Saint Claude, Guadeloupe 11 October 2016.

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker, Saint Claude, Guadeloupe, 11/10/2016

Dignity has no nationality: Haitian migration and Citizenship in the Dominican Republic

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference SCS, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 5/7/2016

Then, with slow strokes, the master changed the sketch’: Harold Simmons, Derek Walcott, Dustan St Omer and pre-independence St Lucia’

American Networks: Radicals Under the Radar (1868-1968), Notre Dame, United States, 1/7/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, launch of On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (LUP 2015) -FOKAL-Fondation Connaissance et Liberte, Port-au-Prince, 8 June 2016.

Book Launch, Port au Prince, Haiti, 8/6/2016

“‘Are we not men’: names, animals and Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic” / “‘Are we not men’: nombres, animals y migrantes Haitianos en la Republica Dominicana” /”‘Are we not men’: noms, animaux et les immigrants haïtiens en République Dominicaine’

Caribbean Studies Association CSA Annual Conference, Port au Prince, Haiti, 6/6/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, The Nobel Laureate Week Folk Research Centre Lecture: Audubon, Another Vision, Derek Walcotts White Egrets and Adams task of giving things their names, 19 January 2016, Folk Research Centre, St Lucia (broadcast in its entirety by The National Television Network and Radio St. Lucia).

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker to launch Nobel Week in St Lucia, a national celebration of Derek Walcott's Nobel Prize Award, Castries, Saint Lucia, 19/1/2016

M.C. Fumagalli, launch of On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (LUP 2015), ILAS-Institute for Latin American Studies, Senate House, London, 4 December 2015.

Invited presentation, Book Launch - Invited, London, United Kingdom, 4/12/2015

M.C. Fumagalli, Dante, Derek Walcott e l'esilio, Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna 17 October 2015.

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker to celebrate Dante’s 750th anniversary, Ravenna, Italy, 17/10/2015

‘Derek Walcott and Transatlantic Visual Culture: Pissarro, Gauguin and the Centrality of the Caribbean’

Transatlantic Visual Culture: Pissarro, Gauguin and the Centrality of the Caribbean’, Symbiosis - Transatlantic Studies Conference,, Colchester, United Kingdom, 10/7/2015

-‘These birds keep modelling for Audubon’: ‘White Egrets’ and Derek Walcott’s Ornithological Imagination’

Society for Caribbean Studies Conference SCS, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 5/7/2015

M.C. Fumagalli, Audubon, Another Vision: Derek Walcotts White Egrets and Adams task of giving things their names, Poetry is an Island: Walcotts Topographies, Ludwig Maximilians Universitat, Munich 21-23 May 2015.

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Key-Note Speaker Invited, Munich, Germany, 21/5/2015

M.C. Fumagalli, Altered States, Nothingness, and States of Emergency: La Frontera in Junot Diaz's Monstro and Frank Baez's Ahora es Nunca, Altered States: Configuring Madness in Caribbean Literature, University of Liege, Belgium, 23- 24 April 2015.

Invited presentation, Invited Speaker, Liege, Belgium, 23/4/2015

M.C. Fumagalli, launch of On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (LUP 2015) -Galeria de Arte Casa Quien, Santo Domingo, 16 April 2015.

Invited presentation, BOOK LAUNCH, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 16/4/2015

M.C. Fumagalli, Not walled facts, their essence - Derek Walcotts Tiepolos Hound (2000) and Camille Pissarro, Illuminating Lives: The Biographical Impulse in Postcolonial Literatures-International Symposium, University of Liege, 2-3 March 2017.

Invited presentation, Liège, Belgium, 2000

M.C. Fumagalli, From the 1937 Massacre to Civil Genocide: Continuities and Discontinuities from Manuel Rueda's Bienvenida y la noche: Cronicas de Montecristi to Karmadavis's Visitante (A)temporal / De la masacre de 1937 al genocidio civil: Continuidades y Descontinuidades de Bienvenida y la noche: Cronicas de Montecristi de Manuel Rueda a Visitante (A)temporal de Karmadavis, 6th Edition of Coloquio Internacional La Diversidad Cultural en el Caribe: Memoria y Conflicto de Frontera, Havana, Cuba, 22-26 May 2017.

Havana, Cuba, 1937

M.C. Fumagalli, The 1937 Massacre 80 years later, Language, Genocide, Reconciliation in the Dominican Republic, University of Birmingham, 8 May 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFQhV7ufYI0

Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 1937

Teaching and supervision

Current teaching responsibilities

  • Independent Literature Project (LT831)

  • Introduction to Caribbean Literature (LT262)

Previous supervision

Yit Ho Joshua Ang
Yit Ho Joshua Ang
Thesis title: To the Ends of the Earth: Post-Anthropocene Cosmopolitanism in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, and David Mitchell
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 3/5/2022
Laurel Eberle
Laurel Eberle
Thesis title: A Real Poppy Show: Tales of Madness, Resistance, and Community in the British Virgin Islands
Degree subject: Creative Writing
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 14/5/2021
Mattia Mantellato
Mattia Mantellato
Degree subject: Occasional Study: Literature (Research)
Degree type: Occasional Postgraduate Study
Awarded date: 30/9/2019
Rasha Al Shalabi
Rasha Al Shalabi
Thesis title: Mapping the Dominican-American Experience: Narratives By Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Loida Maritza Perez and Angie Cruz
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 13/4/2017
Dennis Lennox Morrison Lewis
Dennis Lennox Morrison Lewis
Thesis title: Speech, Voice and Parable: Reading and Writing Through Auden (Letters to Auden, a Reading of His Poems, and a Serial Poem of Barack Hussein Obama)
Degree subject: Creative Writing
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 29/6/2016
Hazem Fadel
Hazem Fadel
Thesis title: Contested Cities in Arab Writing (1969-1989)
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 9/6/2015
Penny Woollard
Penny Woollard
Thesis title: Derek Walcott's Americas: The United States of America and the Caribbean
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 15/5/2015
Sean Anthony Seeger
Sean Anthony Seeger
Thesis title: 'History Is a Nightmare From Which I Am Trying to Awake': Non-Linear Temporality in the Works of James Joyce and Derek Walcott
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 11/1/2015
Kai Su Wu
Kai Su Wu
Degree subject: Occasional Study: Literature (Research)
Degree type: Occasional Postgraduate Study
Awarded date: 2/10/2013
Mariia Ustymenko
Mariia Ustymenko
Thesis title: Genuine Mess: Extratextuality in the Work of Four American Women Poets
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 17/6/2013
William John Kingsbury
William John Kingsbury
Thesis title: Narrativising Afghanistan: Outsider and Native Perspectives in Modern Fiction and Films
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 12/6/2013

Publications

Journal articles (35)

Fumagalli, M. and Wooding, B., (2023). Hispaniola Needs New Narratives/La Española Necesita Nuevas Narrativas. OBMICA

Fumagalli, MC., (2020). “Not walled facts, their essence”: Derek Walcott’s Tiepolo’s Hound and Camille Pissarro. Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 55 (3), 421-432

Fumagalli, MC., (2019). “Formidable Things,” “Shocks,” and “Revelations”: Derek Walcott and Warwick Walcott Landscaping St Lucia. Anales del Caribe. 2018

BLUM, H., ECKEL, LE., FUMAGALLI, MC., SHU, Y., ROBERTS, BR. and STEPHENS, MA., (2019). Roundtable - Brian Russell Roberts and Michelle Ann Stephens (eds.), Archipelagic American Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017, $30.95). Pp. 496. isbn978 0 8223 6346 0.. Journal of American Studies. 53 (2)

Fumagalli, MC., (2018). Morning, Paramin Derek Walcott, Peter Doig, and an Ekphrasis of Relation. New West Indian Guide. 92 (3-4), 245-273

Fumagalli, MC., (2017). Every Brightening Minute, Morning, Paramin, by Derek Walcott and Peter Doig. Wasafiri. 32 (4), 53-58

Fumagalli, MC., (2016). L'Esilio di Dante e Derek Walcott. Letture Classensi. 45, 67-83

Fumagalli, MC., (2015). Audubon, Another Vision: Derek Walcott's 'White Egrets' and Adam's Task of Giving Things Their Names. New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 89 (3-4), 231-257

Fumagalli, MC., (2014). “La carne repta entre Dajabón y Juana Méndez”: Manuel Rueda’s “Geography of Living Flesh” and the Borderland of Hispaniola. Caribbean Quarterly. 60 (3), 1-18

FUMAGALLI, MC., (2013). Isla Abierta’ or ‘Isla Cerrada’?: Karmadavis's Pre‐ and Post‐Earthquake Hispaniola. Bulletin of Latin American Research. 32 (4), 421-437

FUMAGALLI, MC., (2013). Hispaniola after the Earthquake: Confronting the Fault Lines. Bulletin of Latin American Research. 32 (4), 391-393

Fumagalli, MC., (2013). Special Issue on Hispaniola After the Earthquake - guest editor Fumagalli, MC. BLAR (Bulletin of Latin American Research). 32 (4)

Fumagalli, MC., (2012). Servants Turned Masters: Carlos Esteban Deive's Viento negro, bosque del caimán, and the Future of Hispaniola. Journal of Haitian Studies. 18 (2), 100-118

Fumagalli, MC., (2011). 'Landscaping Hispaniola: Moreau de Saint-Mery's Border Politics'. New West Indian Guide. 85 (3&4), 169-190

Fumagalli, MC., (2011). Jean Baptiste Picquenard and the Rebels, Maroons, Cannibals, Pacotilleurs and Debauchés of Hispaniola’s Borderland. Sargasso, A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language, and Culture. I & II, 89-104

Fumagalli, MC., (2007). 'Border (Un)Writing: Victor Hugo's Bug-Jargal'. EnterText. 7 (1), 178-195

Fumagalli, MC. and Patrick, PL., (2006). Two Healing Narratives: Suffering, Reintegration, and the Struggle of Language. Small Axe. 10 (2), 61-79

Fumagalli, MC., (2006). 'My Pen Replaced a Brush': Derek Walcott's Tiepolo's Hound and Brushing History against the Grain. Commonwealth (Paris, France). 28 (2), 81-94

Fumagalli, MC., (2005). A conversation with Derek Walcott on Dante. Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. 666 (666), 87-98

Fumagalli, MC., (2003). Epitaph for the Young: Culture or mimicry?. Agenda. 39 (1-3), 51-76

Fumagalli, MC., (2003). 'The Smallest Cell Remembers': She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks and Marlene Nourbese Philip's Journey Back to Africa. EnterText: An Interactive Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Cultural and Historical Studies and Creative Work. 3 (2), 162-179

Fumagalli, MC., (2003). Names Matter. Journal of Caribbean Literatures. 3 (3), 123-132

Fumagalli, MC., (2002). Special issue on Derek Walcott (Foreword). AGENDA. 39 (1-3), 11-13

Fumagalli, MC., (2002). Maryse Condé's La Migration des Coeurs, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and (the Possibility of) Creolization. Journal of Caribbean Literatures. 3 (2), 65-87

Fumagalli, MC., (2002). Representing the world instead of reproducing it: M. P. Shiels The Purple Cloud. Ariel. 33 (1), 63-82

Fumagalli, MC., (2002). Derek Walcott - Agenda Special Issue - guest editor Fumagalli MC. Agenda. 39 (1-3), 11-416

Fumagalli, MC., (2000). Derek Walcott's Omeros and Dante's Commedia: Epics of the Self and Journeys into Language. The Cambridge Quarterly. XXIX (1), 17-36

Fumagalli, MC., (2000). 'Lo Stilo della Sua Loda or The Style of Her Praise: Dante's Vita Nuova and Derek Walcott's Another Life'. Journal of West Indian Literature. 9 (1), 42-70

Fumagalli, MC., (1998). "Seeing Things: Seamus Heaney’s Poetry of Paradise". New Comparison. 25, 126-140

Fumagalli, MC., (1997). 'What Dante Means To Me': Seamus Heaney's translation of the First Three Cantos of Dante's 'Inferno'. AGENDA. 34 (3-4), 204-234

Fumagalli, MC., (1997). The eternal fountain of poetic imagination: Seamus Heaney's translation of Juan de la Cruz's 'Cantar de la alma que se huelga a conoscer a Dios por fee'. AGENDA. 35 (2), 162-173

FUMAGALLI, MC., (1996). 'STATION ISLAND' - HEANEY,SEAMUS 'DIVINA COMMEDIA'. IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW. 26 (1), 127-142

Fumagalli, MC., (1996). Todo se altera, nada se destruye: La versión de Marlene Nourbese Philip sobre el rapto de Proserpina de Ovidio y Homero. Anales del Caribe: Centro de Estudios del Caribe. 16-18, 273-285

Fumagalli, MC., (1996). The Reversible World: Poetry and the West Indies. Caribana. 5, 159-171

Fumagalli, MC., (1995). Seamus Heaney's Northern Irish 'Ugolino': An 'Original Reproduction' of the Dantean Episode. Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies. 4, 124-143

Books (7)

Fumagalli, M., (2023). Derek Walcott's Painters: A Life in Pictures. Edinburgh University Press. 1399512137. 9781399512138

Fumagalli, MC., (2015). On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Liverpool University Press. 9781781381601

Fumagalli, MC., Del Valle Alcala, R. and Ledent, B., (2014). The Cross-Dressed Caribbean Writing, Politics, Sexualities. University of Virginia Press. 0813935245. 9780813935249

Fumagalli, MC., Hulme, P., Robinson, O. and Wylie, L., (2013). Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio. Liverpool UP. 9781846318900

Fumagalli, MC., (2009). Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa's Gaze. University of Virginia Press. 9780813928586

Fumagalli, MC., (2001). The Flight of the Vernacular: Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and the Impress of Dante. Brill/Rodopi. 9789042014763

Fumagalli, MC., (2001). The Flight of the Vernacular. BRILL. 9789042014763

Book chapters (21)

Fumagalli, MC., Foreword - Freddy Prestol Castillo El Masacre se pasa a pie / You can cross the Masacre on foot. In: You can cross the Masacre on foot / El Masacre se pasa a pie. Duke University Press

Fumagalli, M., (2023). ‘A Bulwark against Intolerance and Hospitality as Praxis’. In: Caryl Phillips's Genealogies. Editors: Munos, D., O'Callaghan, E. and Mergeai, M., . Cross/Cultures. 9004545549. 9789004545540

Fumagalli, MC., (2023). A Bulwark against Intolerance and Hospitality as Praxis. In: Caryl Phillips’s Genealogies. BRILL. 255- 259. 9789004545540

Fumagalli, M., (2022). Ways of Seeing: Derek Walcott and the Visual Arts. In: Tributes to Derek Walcott, 1930-2017: In Various Light,. Editors: Doumerc, E. and Goethals, H., . Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 1-5275-8401-1

Fumagalli, M. and Wooding, B., (2021). Memorialization, solidarity, ethnically mixed couples, and the mystery of hope: mainstreaming Border of Lights. In: The Border of Lights Reader. Editors: Paulino, E. and Myers, M., . Ahmerst College Press. 162- 170

Fumagalli, MC. and Wooding, B., (2021). Memorialization, Solidarity, Ethnically Mixed Couples, and the Mystery of Hope Mainstreaming Border of Lights. In: The Border of Lights Reader: Bearing Witness to Genocide in the Dominican Republic. Editors: Myers, MJ. and Paulino, E., . Amherst College Press. 162- 170. 978-1-943208-27-2

Fumagalli, M., (2020). ‘When dialogue is no longer possible, what still exists is the mystery of hope’: migration and citizenship in the Dominican Republic in film, literature and performance.. In: Border Transgression and Reconfiguration of Caribbean Spaces. Editors: Moïse, M. and Réno, F., . Palgrave MacMillan. 139- 161. 978-3-030-45938-3

Fumagalli, M., (2020). When Dialogue Is No Longer Possible, What Still Exists Is the Mystery of Hope’: Migration and Citizenship in the Dominican Republic in Film, Literature and Performance. In: Border Transgression and Reconfiguration of Caribbean Spaces. Editors: Moise, M. and Reno, F., . Palgrave McMillan. 139- 163. 978-3-030-45938-3

Fumagalli, M., (2018). La masacre de 1937: aduenarse de un recuerdo tal y como relumbra en el istante de un peligro. In: Masacre de 1937: 80 anos despues - Reconstruyendo la memoria. Editors: Bosch, M., . Fundacion Bosch, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 273- 295

Fumagalli, MC., (2016). Resistance in the Rubble: Post-San Zenón Santo Domingo from Ramón Lugo Lovatón’s Escombros: Huracán del 1930 to Carlos Federico Pérez’s La ciudad herida. In: Tracking the Literature of Tropical Weather: Typhoons, Cyclones, and Hurricanes. Editors: Collett, A., McDougall, R. and Thomas, S., . Palgrave Macmillan. 177- 198. 978-3-319-41515-4

Fumagalli, MC., (2016). 'Derek Walcott'. In: Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. Editors: Gates, HL. and Knight, FW., . Oxford University Press. 314- 319

Fumagalli, MC., (2015). 'Une belle phrase peut changer la vie/A Beautiful Sentence Can Change One's Life': Jean-Noël Pancrazi's Montecristi. In: Il valore della letteratura. Scritture in onore di Luigi Sampietro. Editions Mimesis. 95- 104. 9788857530109

Fumagalli, MC., Hulme, P., Robinson, O. and Wylie, L., (2013). Introduction. In: Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio. Editors: Fumagalli, MC., Hulme, P., Robinson, O. and Wylie, L., . Liverpool University Press. 1- 20. 9781846318900

Fumagalli, MC., Ledent, B. and Del Valle Alcala, R., (2013). Introduction. In: The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities. University of Virginia Press. 1- 21. 9783319325842

Fumagalli, MC., (2008). 'You Ti'nk Hero Can Dead-Til de Las' Reel?': Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come and Sergio Corbucci's Django. In: The Caribbean Writer as Warrior of the Imaginary/L'Ecrivain caribéen, guerrier de l'imaginaire. Brill/Rodopi. 397- 409. 9789042025530

Fumagalli, MC., (2006). Maryse Condé Creolizes the Canon in La Migration des cœurs. In: Emerging Perspectives on Maryse Condé: A Writer of Her Own. Africa World Press. 253- 274. 9781592212224

Fumagalli, MC., (2006). 'Writing that Conquers vs Breasts Swingers: From Jan Van der Straet to Grace Nichols'. In: Swinging My Breasts at History: Caribbean Women Writing. Editors: Inghilleri, M., . Mango Publishing. 94- 104

Fumagalli, MC., (2004). Bridges across Chasms: Derek Walcott's The Bounty and Creolization. In: Bridges across Chasms: Towards a Transcultural Future in Caribbean Literature. Liège Language and Literature, English Department, Université de Liège. 303- 311. 9782872330263

Fumagalli, MC., (2002). Remembering the Contemporary: Lady Mary Wroth and Erna Brodber. In: Centre of Remembrance: Memory and Caribbean Women's Literature. Mango Publishing Group. 81- 94. 9781902294025

Fumagalli, MC., (2002). Derek Walcott's Epitaph for the Young: A Poem in XII Cantos: Modernist Texts and the Caribbean Experience. In: Intertextuality and Modernism in Comparative Literature. Philomel. 271- 289. 9781898685425

Fumagalli, MC., (1993). Eterno tormento spirituale e impossibilità del ritorno a casa: Le storie di Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield, Dean Moriarty e la leggenda dell'ebreo errante. In: L'Ebreo errante: Metamorfosi di un mito. Cisalpino. 301- 313. 9788820507459

Grants and funding

2023

Painting the Caribbean (1850-1904)

Leverhulme Trust

2018

On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

University of Essex

2017

The Haitian-Dominican Border: Past and Present

University of Essex

2016

Festival 4 Chemins, Port-au-Prince

University of Essex

2015

Derek Walcott's Painters

Leverhulme Trust

Derek Walcott's Painters

Leverhulme Trust

2012

On the Edge: The Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Leverhulme Trust

2011

An Island Divided and an Island Shared: Haiti and the Dominican

JISLAC

Contact

mcfuma@essex.ac.uk
+44 (0) 1206 872610

Location:

5NW.4.13, Colchester Campus

More about me
On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic: https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/60645
Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa's Gaze: http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3953
The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities: http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4416
Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio: https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/61775
Special Issue on Hispaniola After the Earthquake,BLAR (Bulletin of Latin American Research): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/blar.2013.32.issue-4/issuetoc
Agenda - Special Issue on Walcott: http://www.agendapoetry.co.uk/index.php
Maria Cristina Fumagalli discussing On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic with Alejandra Bronfman for New Books in Caribbean Studies: http://newbooksnetwork.com/maria-c-fumagalli-on-the-edge-writing-the-border-between-haiti-and-the-dominican-republic-liverpool-up-2015/
Pantomime - Derek Walcott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bC503njMI
80th Anniversary of 1937 massacre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruDo3mjfpU
‘Stranger than Fiction: Opportunities for a New Narrative in Dominico-Haitian relations under Covid-19’, Human Rights Centre Blog, University of Essex, 8 July 2020: https://hrcessex.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/stranger-than-fiction-opportunities-for-a-new-narrative-in-dominico-haitian-relations-under-covid-19/
‘Eagle View: Karmadavis Performing Borders - An Interview with Maria Cristina Fumagalli and Bridget Wooding / Vista de águila: Karmadavis: fronteras y performance – Una entrevista con Maria Cristina Fumagalli y Bridget Wooding’,: https://performingborders.live/2019/10/14/guest-post-karmadavis-interview-with-maria-cristina-fumagalli-and-bridget-wooding-english-spanish/
‘How a Broken Migration Policy Has Divided Haiti and the Dominican Republic’, interviewed by World Politics Review, March 2018: https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/24431/how-a
‘Conozcamos a Maria Cristina Fumagalli’ OBMICA Bulletin 8.2 (June 2018) p. 6.: http://obmica.org/images/Publicaciones/Boletines/Boletin-Obmica-Junio.pdf
La Frontera Dominico-Haitiana: Pasado y Presente: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruDo3mjfpU
La Española Necesita Nuevas Narrativas (with Bridget Wooding): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z10KQhEHIcTuJxbYDHh6-livV6oYCKyA/view