Petal Samuel

Petal Samuel is a graduate student in the English department at Vanderbilt. She earned her Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in 2011 from the University of Pennsylvania as a double major in Africana Studies and English. At UPenn, she was inducted into the Delta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. She earned her M.A. from Vanderbilt University in August 2012. Her area of focus is twentieth century Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature. Her research focuses on the triangulation between literature, history, and linguistic forms (creole and patois formations in particular) within Caribbean literature, and their relationships to nation building processes in both the pre- and post-independence periods. She is also particularly interested in Caribbean women’s writing, and their challenges to, critiques of, and departures from male-centered philosophical, historical, and literary paradigms within Caribbean Studies more broadly.

Petal has presented at conferences such as the 2010 Antillanité, Créolité, Littérature Monde Colloquium at University of the West Indies, Cave Hill and the Caribbean Studies Association’s 36th Annual Conference at the World Trade Center, Curaçao in 2011, and will present on a panel on women’s writing in the French Caribbean at the upcoming 2013 Northeast MLA meeting. Petal is the recipient of the Provost’s Graduate Fellowship, and is committed to the development of more diverse Caribbean Studies programming on campus. She is currently a co-coordinator of the Caribbean Studies Reading Group through the Robert Penn Warren Center. The group is fashioned to address the needs of an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars interested in reading, writing, and sharing work critically focused on the Caribbean region and Caribbeanist methodologies.