Dr. Marie Line Charles-Galley, a teacher at the full French Immersion school of Académie Lafayette, will present a talk titled “Haitian Identity through Contemporary Literature” at 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 30, via Zoom.

Dr. Charles-Galley is originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She spent her elementary and secondary school years alternating between Port-au-Prince and Chicago, Ill, resulting in her being bilingual at a very early age. Marie Line obtained her bachelor’s degree in Chicago at Saint Xavier University. Upon graduation, she spent a year in Haiti teaching English as a Second Language, then went to live in Mexico where she studied for a Masters in Comparative Literature. In Kansas City, at the University of Missouri, she obtained her Master’s in Education and decided in 2011 to pursue her Doctoral degree in Romance Languages at the University of Missouri in Columbia from where she graduated in 2018. Currently, she lives in Kansas City, Missouri and teaches at the full French Immersion school of Académie Lafayette.

Marie Line ‘s thesis is a study of the literature from the West African country of Togo: from its early beginnings in the 1920s to its more contemporary and current authors. Her first published piece is a book review regarding contemporary Haitian Writers which was circulated by Alternative Francophone, December of 2013. The article is titled: Book Review/ Compte rendu on Menard, Nadève. Écrits d’Haïti. Perspectives sur la littérature haïtienne contemporaine (1986-2006). Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2011, 486 p. Alternative Francophone vol.1, 6(2013): 97-98.¹ She has two additional opinion pieces that she is hoping to publish soon : first on Equatorial Guinean author Leoncio Evita’s novel Cuando los Combes Luchaban, and the other on Haitian author Gary Victor’s A l’Angle des Rues Paralleles. In past conferences, she has offered findings on Haitian writers Emmelie Prophète and Gary Victor, both contemporary writers, as well as on the multitalented Togolese writer Kangni Alem.

Her presentation titled: Haitian Identity through Contemporary Literature, is a 30-minute reflection piece that leaves many areas opened for debate and other interpretations.

All lectures in the series will be held via Zoom and are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the arts, languages, and philosophy department at 573-341-4185 or email alp@mst.edu.