University of Montana Scholar to Be Honored by the Caribbean Philosophical Association

Benedicte Boisseron, an associate professor of French and Francophone language and literature at the University of Montana, has been selected to receive the Nicolas Guillen Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. She is being honored for her book Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora (University Press of Florida, 2014) Dr. Boisseron will receive the award this June at the association’s convention in Mexico.

Dr. Boisseron’s father is a native of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. He moved to France at the age of 17, where he met Dr. Boisseron’s mother.

“This book was important for me to write because it carries an autobiographical resonance,” Dr. Boisseron said. “Now back in Guadeloupe, my father is somehow seen as a ‘Creole renegade.’ Likewise for me as a half-Guadeloupean who was not taught Creole while growing up in France.”

Dr. Boisseron studied at the University of Paris and then earned a Ph.D. in French literature at the University of Michigan.