Trica Keaton,PhD
Professor
Appointments
Chair: Department of African and African American Studies
The Evans Family Distinguished Professor
Faculty Affiliations: Departments of Sociology and Film & Media Studies
Area of Expertise
I invite you to read my biography.
Biography
I am a professor and interdisciplinary social scientist whose research and teaching examine evidence-based responses to enduring societal questions—most notably, what it has meant to be racialized-as-black (lowercase "b" intended) in the U.S., France, Europe, and beyond. I explore both the consequences of this longstanding process of racialization and the ways individuals and communities have resisted—and refused—its intersectional effects.
Throughout my professional journey, I have organized conferences, symposia, film screenings, and public events at universities where I have been a faculty member, as well as in France, thereby contributing to the growth of Black French and European Studies within U.S. academia. I have also been recognized with several competitive awards and fellowships, including residency fellowships from the French Institutes for Advanced Study (FIAS/Iméra), the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, and Columbia University's Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris. I have received additional support from the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, as well as the Chateaubriand Fellowship, which holds special significance as the first major competitive fellowship I received as a doctoral student to conduct research in France. At Dartmouth, I have received a variety of competitive awards and support, including the Neukom Institute CompX Faculty Grant and the Scholarly Innovation and Advancement Award.
I teach a variety of courses on these topics and created the Afro/Black Paris study-away FSP, which offers students an immersive exploration of the African diaspora in Paris and other regions of France, highlighted here as well: Postcards from Paris. I am also developing Digital Black Paris©, a short film and augmented reality heritage app that maps and brings to life the hidden histories of Black Americans in Paris.
Education
University of California, Berkeley: Ph.D. with distinction - Education (Sociology of Education and African Diaspora Studies), 2001
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France: Doctoral Studies in Sociology
University of California, Los Angeles: M.A. - Applied Linguistics (Language Policy and Immigration in France)
Middlebury College: M.A. - French
University of California, Los Angeles: B.A. - Linguistics and French
Taught Courses
Publications
My publications include both articles and books (monographs & edited volumes):
#You Know You're Black in France When...: The Fact of Everyday Antiblackness (MIT Press)
--Selected as a 2023 Choice Pick by the Association of College and Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association)
--Shortlisted for the 2023 American Library in Paris Book Award
Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness (co-edited, Duke University Press)
Black Europe and the African Diaspora (co-edited, University of Illinois Press)
Muslim Girls and the Other France: Race, Identity Politics, and Social Exclusion (Indiana University Press)
My current book project, Real to Reel: Racialized Representations and French Banlieue Cinéma, takes up the above questions as they unfold in French cinema and France's film industry.
Selected Articles and Other Publications
"Curating Paris Noir: Futuring Blackness in the Present Tense" (tentative title). In Paris Noir II: Circulations, Artistiques et Luttes Anticoloniales, 1950–2000 (tentative title). Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, In press, 2026.
"Why are French Authorities acknowledging racial profiling but doing nothing about it?" Contexts (Sociology for the Public), January 12, 2024
"Race," in Keywords for African American Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2018): 163-167
"Au Nègre Joyeux: Everyday Anti-blackness Guised as Public Art," Nka: The Journal of Contemporary African Art (2016): 52-58
"Review of Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe" by Michael McEachrane (ed), The Black Scholar 46, no. 1 (2016): 77-80
"Racial Profiling and the 'French Exception.'" French Cultural Studies, 24, no. 2 (2013): 231-242
"Euzhan Palcy: Creative Dissent, Artistic Reckoning—An Interview by Trica Danielle Keaton," Palimpsest (2012): 116-134
"Racial Profiling: France and the U.S." (part 1 and part 2), Racism Review, 2012
"The Defiant One: Euzhan Palcy," Feminist Wire, 2011
"The Politics of Race-Blindness: (Anti)blackness and Category Blindness in Contemporary France," Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 7, no.1 (2010): 103-131
"'Black (American) Paris' and the 'Other France': The Race Question and Questioning Solidarity," In Black Europe and the African Diaspora, eds. D. Clark Hine, T. Keaton, and S. Small, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009)
"Black Paris/Paris Noir," in Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, (Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO Press/Greenwood Publishing, 2008): 187-188
"Review of Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image by Bennetta Jules-Rosette," Journal of American Studies, 42, no. 2 (2008): 2
"Arrogant Assimilationism: National Identity Politics and African Origin Muslim Girls in the Other France," Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 36, no. 4 (2005): 405-423
"Un Regard Afro-américain sur une 'Cité' de la Banlieue Parisienne : Les Courtillières," Agone: Sociologie, Histoire & Politique, 29-30 (2003) : 121-134
"Review of We Won't Budge: An African Exile in the World by Manthia Diawara," African Studies Review, 46, no 3 (2003): 175-176
"Muslim Girls and the 'Other France': An Examination of Identity Construction," Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 5, no. 1 (1999): 47-64
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