Kristin Adele Okoli is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities. She received a joint doctorate in French and African American Studies from Yale in 2014. She also holds a B.A. from Tulane in French, English, and Art History (Newcomb College, 2008). Dr. Okoli’s research and teaching interests include Louisianan literature, Haitian art and literature, nineteenth-century French literature and culture, fashion, material culture, and popular music and performance in French and Creole languages. Her first book manuscript traces representations of la belle créolethrough the literature, visual culture, and popular music of France, Louisiana, and Haiti from the late 17th century to our contemporary moment. The project explores the deployment of this trope in the service of nationalist sentiment across time and space, arguing that gendered aesthetic and erotic ideals at once reflect and constitute political and racial ideologies. Dr. Okoli has taught on topics such as the Creole Atlantic, Fashion History and Theory, African American Women’s History, African American Art History, and Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century.