Dr. Régine Michelle Jean-Charles is the Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice as well as Director of Africana Studies at Northeastern University. She is also Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A Black feminist literary scholar who works at the intersections of race, gender, and justice from a global perspective, her scholarship and teaching include work on Black France, African diasporic literatures, Caribbean Studies, Haiti, and the Haitian diaspora. She has authored over 30 publications that have appeared in books, edited volumes, and academic journals.

Dr. Jean-Charles is the author of three books: Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2014) examines theoretical, visual, and literary texts in order to challenge global rape culture. The Trumpet of Conscience Today (New York: Orbis Press, 2021) considers at three social justice movements—Black Lives Matter, #metoo, and prison abolition through the lens of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s lesser-known speeches in The Call to Conscience. Her most recent book, Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2022) is a Black feminist study of contemporary Haitian authors, academics, and artists. Dr. Jean-Charles holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a masters and PhD from Harvard University. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Mays Foundation, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars as well as the Carter G. Woodson Institute in African American Studies at UVA. Her academic work has appeared in journals such as Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, American Quarterly, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, and Journal of Haitian Studies among others. She is a regular contributor to public media outlets like Ms. Magazine, The Boston Globe, WGBH, America Magazine, and Cognoscenti, where she has weighed in on topics such as #metoo, Black girlhood, and issues affecting the Haitian diaspora.

Much of Dr. Jean-Charles’s activist work has been with A Long Walk Home where she began as founding board member in 2003. A Long Walk Home, Inc., is a non-profit organization that uses art to educate, inspire, and mobilize young people to end violence against girls and women. Now a board member emerita, her involvement in ALWH ranged from performing in Story of a Rape Survivor, a multi-media arts performance about black women and sexual assault, conducting workshops for the Girl/Friends Leadership Institute in Chicago, to giving lectures at universities across the country on topics such as study abroad and sexual assault. Her work with the Boston area includes initiatives with Shatter the Silence a faith-based initiative to address sexual violence, AFAB the Haitian Women’s Association of Boston, and the Milton Anti-Racist Coalition of which she is a founding member.