Dr Leighan M Renaud

My research focuses on contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature. I am primarily interested in how contemporary writers from the region engage with themes such as gender, family, neo-coloniality, legacies of slavery, and language. My forthcoming monograph, Motherhood, Mothering and Marronage (Peter Lang 2023), examines the representation of matrifocality in twenty-first century Caribbean fiction, and argues that matrifocality is represented, not only as an integral component of family and community life, but also as an act of marronage and a symbol of resistance against patriarchal and Eurocentric normativity.

Other research areas I am interested in include: creative responses to archives of the Caribbean, Black Aquatic literature, and Black women’s writing. My research seeks always to be community-focused and interdisciplinary, and I am interested in the ways that the study of literature can speak to and inform debates across the humanities and social sciences.