Fiona Maurissette
Lecturer in the Writing Program
Black speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, Black feminism, representations of Haiti and the Haitian diaspora, and Black freedom practices
Fiona Maurissette is a Visiting Lecturer in the Writing Program. After graduating from Wellesley and completing the NYC Teaching Fellows Program, Fiona completed her doctorate in English Literature at Tufts University. Her research interests include Black speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, intersectional feminism, Haiti, Black diasporic freedom practices, and maroonage.
She enjoys movies, rollerskating, soccer with her toddler, and yoga.
Education
- B.A., Wellesley College
- M.S., St. John's University-New York
- M.A., Tufts University
- Ph.D., Tufts University
Current and upcoming courses
Black Feminism and the Future
WRIT178
In this course, we will examine Black feminist essays and speculative fiction as resources for thinking about the future of feminism and its impact on the broader culture. These texts are helping to shift paradigms of what is understood by the term “feminism”. They also contain critical information that students need not just to survive but thrive in the future. We will discuss how these works offer new ways to think about kinship, gender, reproductive rights, abolition, and representations of selfhood. In addition, they will provide a springboard for looking inward to our own lives and perspectives, as we explore how writing, reading, and action are influenced by the personal. Indeed, if the “personal is political,” as Audre Lorde aptly stated, then what we write from our own experience can shape and change our world.
-
Narrating the Black Atlantic: The Past, Present, and Future of Black Literature
AFR223
In his seminal work on Black culture and modernity, theorist Paul Gilroy argues, “By directing attention repeatedly towards crossing experiences and translocal histories, the idea of the black Atlantic not only deepens our understanding of modern statecraft, commercial power and their relationship to territory and space, it also summons some of the tough, conceptual problems that can imprison or ossify the idea culture.” In this course, we will examine texts (written, visual, and oral) by Black writers that illuminate Gilroy’s argument about the transatlantic slave trade’s significant impact on shaping the modern world. Our discussions will focus on the lived experience of Black people in the diaspora, particularly their production of culture and identity in colonized spaces. In addition, we will pay close attention to the writers’ conceptualization of Black futurity. Possible writers include: Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, Mikki Kendall, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Edwidge Danticat, bell hooks, Paul Gilroy, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Gloria Naylor, Dionne Brand, adrienne maree brown, N.K Jemisin, Yaa Gyasi, P. Djèlí Clark, Bernadine Evaristo, and Elizabeth Acevedo. -
The Personal is Political: Celebrating the “I” in Politics
WRIT174
“The personal is political” is a feminist rallying cry. It affirms, among other things, that we act and write out of our subjectivity, and that identity and politics are inseparable. In this course, we will explore our own relationships to sociopolitical matters such as reproductive rights, immigration and migration, prison abolition, environmental justice, and citizenship. We will also investigate the power structures that influence these areas and that make them resistant to meaningful change. Using This Bridge Called My Back: Writings from Radical Women of Color as our inspiration and guide, we will develop the critical thinking and writing skills needed to transform sociopolitical systems and to assert the value of our lives in them.