BOF Sabbatical Leave - Kathleen Gyssels. two monographs about L.-G. Damas. 'a ti pa': vers une France décoloniale avec l'antillectuel L. G. Damas, Brill), and collection of poetry Mine de riens (2012), forthcoming 2022, with Ed. Passage(s).

1. A first monograph will be finished in the form of an intellectual biography of Leon Damas. It will contextualize the poet and politician in the Negritude movement and in the broader field of postcolonial writing by prominent poets from African and the Caribbean. Neglected, Damas will here be rehabilitated as a forerunner of many emancipatory movements. 2. The Second monograph is an essay on the posthumous published collection of poetry by the same Leon Damas, Dernière escale (2012). it forms the second tome of my close reading of his earlier collection Black-Label (1956). Ed. passage(s) will launch the book at the end of 2018 or Spring 2019 (by the end of my sabbatical).3. Meanwhile, I start a third new project on "dark tourism" in the Caribbean, on heritage tourism and new "memorials" in the Caribbean and the Guianas: given the poor and even misrepresentation of local heroes and other minorities in the West Indies, my book will shed light on important gaps and how some (of the best) metafictional narratives fill in this void (Padura, Dalembert for the Jewish presence in the archipelago, for instance).

Keywords:VULNERABLE GROUPS, CARRIBEAN AUTHORS, PUERTO RICAN LITERATURE, POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

Disciplines:Curatorial and related studies, History, Other history and archaeology, Language studies, Literary studies, Philosophy, Art studies and sciences, Artistic design, Audiovisual art and digital media, Heritage, Music, Theatre and performance, Visual arts, Other arts, Product development, Study of regions