Dr. Blair Watson is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at SCU. She holds a BA in French from Wake Forest University, a MA in French Translation from Kent State University, and a PhD in French Literature from Emory University, with a certificate in Film and Media Studies. Her teaching and research interests focus on 20th- and 21st-century visual and literary representations of race and ethnicity across the Francophone African diaspora. In particular, her work examines the ongoing connection between colonization, immigration, and racialized violence in Africa, the Caribbean, and metropolitan France. She has also worked on depictions of violence in Algeria and Algerian migrants to France. Her current research engages with the Haitian-born filmmaker, Raoul Peck, and his transnational representations of Blackness in Rwanda, Haiti, the Congo, and the United States.

Research Interests:

• Postcolonial Theory
• 20th/21st century Francophone African Literature, Film and Culture
• 20th/21st century Caribbean Literature, Film and Culture
• Migration, Diaspora, and Transnationalism
• Critical Race Studies

Courses

• FREN 1, 2, and 3: Introduction to French Language & Culture I, II, & III
• FREN 11A/12A:  Cultures & Ideas - The French speaking World
• FREN 108: French for a Global Marketplace

Publications

Selected Publications:

• “Crime Without Borders: Marginality and Transnational Power in Jacques Audiard’s Un prophète,” forthcoming in Transnational Crime Cinema, eds. Sarah Delahousse and Aleksander Sedzielarz. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  
  
• “What About Majid?: Hyper-Visibility and Violence in Michael Haneke’s Caché,” Studies in French Cinema. 20:2 (April 2020): 125-139.
  
  
• “A Voice of their Own: Narrative Obscurity and African History in the Cinema of Raoul Peck,” Black Camera. 11:1 (Fall 2019): 180-200.
  
  
• “Auto-Destruction or Auto-Reproduction?: Post/Colonial Legacies of Violence in Yasmina Khadra,” Francosphères. 8:1 (2019): 57-72.
  
  
• “The De-Banalization of Sexual Violence in Bolya’s La Polyandre,” Essays in French Literature and Culture. no. 56 (2019): 23-38.

 Noteable:

• Dr. Watson has been selected as a 2022-2023 Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Arts and Humanities
  
  
• Dr. Watson was recently awarded a 2021 ACLS Project Development Grant for her manuscript project currently entitled "Unheard Voices, Unknown Faces: Raoul Peck and Transnational Black Consciousness"