Avonelle Pauline Remy hails from an island in the Eastern Caribbean called Dominica…NOT to be confused with the Dominican Republic. She subsequently completed her B.A in Science du Langage et de la Communication at the Université de Franche-Comte in Besançon, France. Upon completion of her B.A, she returned to Dominica where she taught high school French for four years. Her ambition to pursue French at a higher level took her first to Ohio University and then to the University of Iowa where she earned respectively, her M.A in French and Francophone Studies and her PH. D in French and Francophone World Studies. Her dissertation, Infiltrating the Colonial City through the Imaginaries of Métissage: Saint Louis (Senegal), Jérémie (Haiti) and Saint-Pierre (Martinique), explores how the paradigm of métissage [hybridity] is fundamental to observe the intricacies of circulating cultures, social transformations, female economic agency, and identity formation in the towns of Saint-Louis in Senegal and Saint-Pierre in Martinique  during colonial times, as well as in the town of Jérémie in post-revolutionary Haiti.  My research agenda also includes tourism in former colonial spaces (Haiti, Jamaica, The Dominican Republic, Morocco, among others). This scholarship stems from my interest in the continued (mis)representations of black and brown bodies in the neo-colonial imaginary. Marginal masculinities in the Caribbean and the Maghrebin world are also part of my ongoing scholarship agenda.

Outside of research and teaching language, culture and literature courses, I enjoy traveling, playing word games, reading and outdoor activities.