Sara E. Johnson

Professor Johnson’s research and teaching areas include literature, theory and history of the Hispanophone, Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean and its diasporas; hemispheric American literature and cultural studies; the Age of Revolution in the extended Americas; and music and dance of the African Diaspora.

She has done extensive research abroad, living in Senegal, Cuba, Haiti and Martinique. Past fellowships include those from the Ford Foundation, the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Program, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Hellman Fund, the UC Consortium for Black Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Bibliographical Society of America. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and her B.A. from Yale University in Comparative Literature and African American Studies

Her book The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) is an inter-disciplinary study that explores how people responded to the collapse and reconsolidation of colonial life in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1845). The book traces expressions of transcolonial black politics, both aesthetic and experiential, in places including Hispaniola, Louisiana, Jamaica, and Cuba. It was published by the University of California Press as part of the Modern Language initiative, a partnership between the Modern Language Association, the Mellon Foundation, and several university presses.

Her book Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (Omohundro Institute/UNC Press, 2023) documents the work of Moreau de Saint-Méry, a late eighteenth-century Caribbean intellectual. The book combines traditional academic chapters and experimental forms in its use of archival fragments and visual culture to tell the stories of the free people of color and enslaved women and men who enabled Moreau’s work.

Johnson is the co-editor of Kaiso! Writings By and About Katherine Dunham (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Studies in Dance History Series, 2006) and Una ventana a Cuba y los Estudios cubanos (San Juan: Ediciones Callejon, Spring 2010). Kaiso! was named one of the top ten arts books of 2006.

Professor Johnson has been a mentor for the McNair program and the Undergraduate Faculty Mentor program. She has also served on over forty-five doctoral and MFA committees and her former students have gone on to various postdoctoral fellowships and to tenure-track jobs at institutions including the University of Oregon, the University of North Carolina, California State University, the College of William and Mary, the University of New Orleans, Brown University, Brigham Young University, the University of Arizona, Tulane University, MiraCosta College, East Stroudsburg University, Texas A &M, Palomar Community College, the University of California, San Diego, Yale University, and Florida International University. She served on the Council of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture from 2018-2023 and was formerly the chair of the William and Mary Quarterly editorial board. She proudly hails from Baltimore City.

Selected Courses:

• Comparative Caribbean Discourse
• Transcolonial American Studies
• Introduction to American Literature
• La narrativa cubana
• Comparative American Slavery in the Age of Revolution
• Inter-American Prose
• La isla que se repite
• Slavery and the Literary Imagination
• Revolutionary Art: Cuban Popular Culture Since 1959
• The World of Jane Austen
• Salsa Music: Style and Substance

Pronouns: she/her

Languages: English, Spanish, French

Professor Johnson is the Co-Director of the UCSD Black Studies Project (BSP).

Affiliated Faculty: Black Diaspora and African American Studies, Center for Iberian & Latin American Studies, Department of Ethnic Studies, Critical Gender Studies Program

Books

• Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2023. LINK
  • 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
  • 2024 P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize, Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora
  • 2024 J. Russell Major Prize in French History, American Historical Association
  • 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for African Studies, Modern Language Association
  • 2024 Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Book Prize, French Colonial Historical Society
  • Honorable Mention, 2024 Gilbert Chinard Book Prize, Society for French Historical Studies
  • Finalist, Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize, Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research
  • Shortlisted, 2024 Kenshur Prize, Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas (University of California Press, 2012). Awarded Honorable Mention for the 2013 William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize from the Modern Language Association LINK
• Kaiso! Writings By and About Katherine Dunham. Co-edited with VeVe Clark (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). LINK
• Una ventana a Cuba y los Estudios cubanos. Co-edited with Amalia Cabezas, Ivette Hernández-Torres and Rodrigo Lazo. (Ediciones Callejon, Spring 2010). LINK

Articles & Book Chapters

• “He Was a Lion and He Would Destroy Much”: A Speculative School of Revolutionary Politics." Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 58 (March 2019): 195-207. LINK
• “Your Mother Gave Birth to a Pig”: Power, Abuse, and Planter Linguistics in Baudry des Lozière’s Vocabulaire Congo." Early American Studies (Winter 2018): 7-40. LINK
  • Winner of the John M. Murrin Prize, awarded annually to the best essay published in Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal and the 2019 best article prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) .
• “Moreau de Saint-Méry: Itinerant Bibliophile.” Library and Information History Volume 31. 3 (2015): 171-197.
• “Never Put your Feet where your Eyes Cain't See: A Meditation on Deepness” in south: a scholarly journal.” Vol 47. 1 (Fall 2015): 52-62. LINK
• "Page to Praxis: Bringing Diaspora Literacy to Life." Theatre Survey Volume 50.1 (May 2009): 19-22. LINK
• "'You Should Give them Blacks to Eat" Cuban Bloodhounds and the Waging of an Inter-American War of Torture and Terror." American Quarterly Vol. 61.1 (March 2009): 65-92. Winner of the Constance M. Rourke Prize given by the American Studies Association annually to the best article published in American Quarterly. LINK
• "Cinquillo Consciousness: The Formation of a Pan-Caribbean Musical Aesthetic." Music, Writing and Caribbean Unity. Ed. Tim Reiss. Trenton: Africa World Press (2005): 35-58.
• "The Integration of Hispaniola: A Reappraisal of Haitian-Dominican Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." Journal of Haitian Studies Vol. 8 No. 2 (Fall 2002): 4-29.

• Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Stanford University
• B.A. in Comparative Literature and African American Studies, Yale University