Nathalie Etoke is a Professor of Francophone and Africana Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of Shades of Black (Seagull Books, 2021); Black Existential Freedom (RLI, 2022), L’Écriture du corps féminin dans la littérature de l’Afrique francophone au sud du Sahara (L’harmattan, 2010) and Melancholia Africana l’indispensable dépassement de la condition noire (Éditions du Cygne, 2010), which won the 2012 Franz Fanon Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and has also been published in English as Melancholia Africana: The Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition (RLI, 2019). Her articles have appeared in numerous journals on Francophone, African, and Diasporic literatures; In 2011, she directed Afro Diasporic French Identities, a documentary on race, identity, and citizenship in contemporary France.