Colin Dayan, also known as Joan Dayan, is the

Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the liter ...

Professor in the Humanities at

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

, 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 Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...

, and the history of slavery. After receiving her Ph.D. from the

Graduate Center of the City University of New York The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the ...

in 1980, she taught at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, the Graduate Center CUNY,

Queens College of the City University of New York Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

, the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

, and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. She received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2004 and was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 2012. 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. 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. Dayan has written multiple books which focus on

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...

issues and human-dog socialization as extended metaphors for imprisonment, racism and non-human personhood. These works include ''The Story of Cruel and Unusual'' (2007), pit bull

fighting Combat ( French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent conflict meant to physically harm or kill the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed ( not using weapons). Combat is sometimes resorted to as a method of self-defense, or ...

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'' (2016) . Dayan has also written about pit bull profiling for publications such as The Conversation. 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.

References

External links

Law School Bio"A Devilish Way of Thinking", ''Boston Review''"Into the Crud", ''Public Books''"Dead Dogs: Breed bans, euthanasia, and preemptive justice", ''Boston Review''"Civilizing Haiti", ''Boston Review''"Dangerous Dogs", ''London Review of Books''"Between the Devil and the Deep Sea", ''Boston Review''"Out of Defeat: Aimé Césaire's Miraculous Words", ''Boston Review''"Words Behind Bars", ''Boston Review''Lecture "The Story of Cruel and Unusual" (November 7, 2007)Lecture "Words Behind Bars" (May 8, 2008)Colin Dayan Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dayan, Colin Year of birth missing (living people) Living people CUNY Graduate Center alumni Princeton University faculty Yale University faculty CUNY Graduate Center faculty Queens College, City University of New York people University of Arizona faculty University of Pennsylvania faculty Vanderbilt University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences