Dr. Emily Sahakian (Ph.D., Northwestern University and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) teaches French and Francophone literatures and culture and advanced French in the Department of Romance Languages and is the faculty liaison for a partnership between UGA and the University of the Antilles in Martinique. She is jointly appointed with Theatre & Film Studies, where she teaches theatre studies and community-based theatre. Her first book, Staging Creolization: Women’s Theater and Performance from the French Caribbean (2017), shines a light on a pioneering group of Caribbean women playwrights and reconstructed for the first time their plays’ international production and reception histories. While scholars have generally framed “creolization” as a linguistic phenomenon, she theorizes it as a performance-based practice of reinventing meaning and resisting the status quo, and thus expand our broader understanding of Caribbean theatre. The book has been reviewed in ten scholarly journals, across a range of disciplines, and described as “essential for Caribbean specialists” (Modern Drama) and “essential reading—across all disciplines and languages—for scholars and students alike of theater and performance studies” (Bulletin of the Comediantes). She is the author of essays on Francophone Caribbean theatre and performance artists, intercultural and transnational theatre, and French stage adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin. With Dr. Andrew Daily (University of Memphis), she has prepared a critical edition and translation of Edouard Glissant's play Histoire de nègre.
Research
French and Francophone literatures and culture, theatre studies and community-based theatre, Francophone Caribbean women writers.
Other Relevant Information
Richard B. Russell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2021
Honorable Mention, Outstanding Public History Project Award, National Council on Public History, 2020
Michael F. Adams Early Career Scholar in the Humanities and Arts, 2018
Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award, 2016
Education
PhD, Northwestern University and the Ecoles des hautes études en sciences sociales