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Colin Dayan

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Colin Dayan
FAAAS
Born1949 (age 74–75)
Atlanta
Other namesJoan Dayan
Occupation(s)Writer, academic, scholar, researcher, essayist
Awards
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
InstitutionsVanderbilt University
Websitecolindayan.com

Colin Dayan FAAAS, also known as Joan Dayan, is Professor Emerita, the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University,[1] where she teaches American studies, comparative literature, and the religious and legal history of the Americas.

She has written extensively on prison law and torture, Caribbean culture and literary history, as well as on Haitian poetics, Edgar Allan Poe, and the history of slavery. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004[2] and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.[3]

Early life and education

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After receiving her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1980, she taught at Princeton University, Yale University, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Queens College of the City University of New York, the University of Arizona, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Career and work

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Dayan is the author of eight books. Her literary history work includes a 1977 English translation of René Depestre's A Rainbow for the Christian West and the 1987 book Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction, which discusses themes of knowledge and identity in Edgar Allan Poe's short stories.[4]

Her book Haiti, History, and the Gods (1995) reorients the study of Haitian history through what she calls "literary fieldwork". In the process, she recasts many boundaries: between politics and poetics, between the secular and the sacred, and between the colonizer and the colonized, those who deemed themselves masters and those who worked as slaves.[5]

Dayan has written multiple books which focus on animal rights issues and human-dog socialization as extended metaphors for imprisonment, racism and non-human personhood.[6] These works include The Story of Cruel and Unusual (2007), pit bull fighting in The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons (2011), and canine representation in media in With Dogs at the Edge of Life (2015).[7][8][9] Dayan has also written about pit bull profiling for publications such as The Conversation.[10]

Her memoirs In the Belly of Her Ghost (2019) and Animal Quintet (2020) use nature and animal imagery to evoke "the uncanny power of physical objects", framing her Haitian heritage and her childhood in the American South in the context of human treatment of animals.[11][12][13]

Publications

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  • A Rainbow for the Christian West. Translated from French. By René Depestre. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.
  • Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
  • Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
  • The Story of Cruel and Unusual. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.
  • The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
  • With Dogs at the Edge of Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
  • In the Belly of Her Ghost: A Memoir. New York: Pantheon Books, 2019.
  • Animal Quintet: A Southern Memoir. New York: Pantheon Books, 2020.

Awards and honors

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She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004[2] and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.[3]

References

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  1. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2017-08-21. Retrieved 2022-11-24.
  2. ^ a b "Joan Dayan". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  3. ^ a b "Colin Dayan". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  4. ^ Eddings, Dennis (1988-01-01). "Joan Dayan. Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction". Studies in English. New Series. 6 (1). ISSN 0278-310X.
  5. ^ Haiti as Method: On Haiti, History, and the Gods at 25, retrieved 2023-02-19
  6. ^ Colin Dayan, "Like a dog: animal law, human cruelty, and the limits of care", retrieved 2023-02-19
  7. ^ Dayan, Colin (2011-02-07). The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-3859-2.
  8. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2020-12-08. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
  9. ^ Green, Ranny (March 14, 2016). "With Dogs At The Edge of Life Makes Readers Re-Examine Humans' Sentimentality With Dogs". American Kennel Club. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
  10. ^ Dayan, Colin. "Pit bulls went from America's best friend to public enemy – now they're slowly coming full circle". The Conversation. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
  11. ^ Dayan, Colin. "Personal Website". Colin Dayan. Colin Dayan. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  12. ^ Tompkins, Jane (2019-06-05). "Review: Colin Dayan's 'In the Belly of Her Ghost' exorcises memories of mother after she's gone". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
  13. ^ Lozano-Cofield, Aubrey (2021-04-07). "In 'Animal Quintet,' Colin Dayan Revisits the Animals of Her Childhood". Southern Review of Books. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
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