BOURHIS-MARIOTTI Claire (PR)

Claire Bourhis-Mariotti is a Full Professor of American History and the Co-Director of the research unit TransCrit at the University of Paris 8. Her main research concentrates on nineteenth-century African American history, particularly the emigration and colonization movements, early Black organizing, the emergence of Black nationalism, and Black transnationalism. 

Her latest book, Wanted ! A Nation ! Black Americans and Haiti, 1804-1893 (University of Gerogia Press, 2023) is an English translation of her first monograph L’union fait la force : les Noirs américains et Haïti, 1804-1893 (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016). She is also the author of Isaac Mason, une vie d’esclave (PURH, 2021), the French translation and critical edition of a postbellum slave narrative entitled Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave (Worcester, Ma., 1893). Her forthcoming book, We Are American Citizens: The Colored Conventions Movement and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights, will be published with UGA Press in spring 2026.

With Hélène Le Dantec-Lowry and Claire Parfait she co-edited Writing History from the Margins : African Americans and the Quest for Freedom (Routledge) in 2017. She has contributed essays to Ending Slavery : The Abolitionist Struggle in Perspective (PULM, Fall 2021), In Search of Liberty : African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (UGA Press, July 2021), Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World (Routledge, 2019), the Revue française d’études américaines, and IdeAs/Idées d’Amérique, among other peer-reviewed journals.

She is an active member of several American and international learned societies, and is, most notably, the Vice-President of the Scientific Board of the Institut des Amériques and the President of the French learned society RéDEHJA (Réseau pour le Développement Européen de l’Histoire de la Jeune Amérique).

Convinced of the importance of developing a link between the whole population and the world of research, she carries out various actions for the popularization of science aimed at schoolchildren, high school students, as well as the general public (conferences, activities/workshops, media appearances, publications in mainstream journals and magazines, etc.).

NB. Full CV available upon request.
 

Administrative responsibilities (past and present, over the last 5 years)

  • Member of the Advisory Board of the Presses Universitaires de Vincennes since May 2025
  • Member of the Research Committee of Université Paris 8 since May 2025
  • Director of the master’s program in foreign languages and humanities since 2023.
  • Co-director of the research unit TransCrit since January 2020
  • President of the RéDEHJA (Réseau pour le Développement Européen de l’Histoire de la Jeune Amérique) since 2024 (Secretary of the RéDEHJA 2010-2016, Vice-President 2016-2024, website manager 2020-2024)
  • Vice-President of the Scientific Board of the Institut des Amériques.
  • General Secretary of the MICEFA (Mission Interuniversitaire de Coordination des Échanges Franco-Américains) from April 2021 to May 2023.

For a complete list of Claire Bourhis-Mariotti’s publications, visit https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/cbourhis-mariotti

Publications (selection)

  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. Wanted ! A Nation ! Black Americans and Haiti, 1804-1893. Translated by Jon Delogu. Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900. Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, 2023.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. “‘This spirit of persecution was the cause of our Convention’ : The National Colored Conventions of the 1830s as an Early Movement for Black Civil Rights.” Revue française d’études américaines, no. 175 (2023) : 68-81. https://doi.org/10.3917/rfea.175.0068.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. “The Colored Conventions Movement, Emigrationism and the Quest for a Black Nationality, 1830-1858.” In Ending Slavery : The Abolitionist Struggle in Perspective, edited by Aje, Lawrence, and Claudine Raynaud, 159-178. Montpellier : Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2022.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. Isaac Mason, une vie d’esclave. Traduction, introduction et notes de Claire Bourhis-Mariotti. Collection Récits d’esclaves. Mont-Saint-Aignan : Publications des universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2021.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. “Frederick Douglass and Debates over the Annexation of the Dominican Republic.” In In Search of Liberty : African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World, edited by Johnson, Ronald A., and Ousmane Power-Greene, 224-250. Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, 2021.
  • « Libres de couleur : migrations choisies ? / Free people of color : chosen migrations ? » Sous la direction de Lawrence Aje et Claire Bourhis-Mariotti, Revue Française d’Études Américaines, 2020/3 (N°164), 14 octobre 2020.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. “Postbellum slave narratives as historical sources : Memories of bondage and realities of freedom in Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave.” In Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World, edited by Aje, Lawrence, and Nicolas Gachon, 30-46. London, New York : Routledge, 2019.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. « Migration et évangélisation : l’installation de l’Église épiscopale en Haïti par le Révérend noir américain James Theodore Holly, 1855-1874. » Recherches Haïtiano-Antillaises N°8 (2019) : 87-108.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. « La colonisation de l’Afrique par les Noirs américains, entre déplacement forcé et migration volontaire : Henry Highland Garnet et l’African Civilization Society ». In La colonisation nouvelle (fin XVIIIe-début XIXe siècles), edited by Dorigny, Marcel, and Bernard Gainot, 89-111. Paris : Éditions SPM, 2018.
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. “African American Emigrationists and the Voluntary Emigration Movement to Haiti, 1804-1862.” In Undoing Slavery : American Abolitionism in Transnational Perspective (1776-1865), edited by Roy, Michaël, Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne, and Claire Parfait, 41-56. Paris : Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2018.
  • Parfait, Claire, Le Dantec-Lowry, Hélène, and Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire, eds. Writing History from the Margins : African Americans and the Quest for Freedom. London, New York : Routledge, 2016
  • Bourhis-Mariotti, Claire. L’union fait la force : les Noirs américains et Haïti, 1804-1893. Collection Des Amériques. Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes : 2016.