Yale University’s Marlene L. Daut, professor of French and Black studies, and Kaiama L. Glover, professor of Black studies, have been awarded the 2026 René Wellek Prize for their co-edited book, A History of Haitian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Presented by the American Comparative Literature Association, the René Wellek Prize is awarded to two outstanding comparative literature books each year — one for a single or co-authored monograph and another for an edited collection.
Featuring essays from 27 individual contributors, A History of Haitian Literature presents the political, cultural, and historical frameworks necessary to comprehend Haiti’s vast literary output since before the nation declared independence in 1804 through the present day.
A Yale faculty member since 2022, Professor Daut teaches courses in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. Her research on the history of the Caribbean has lead to several award-winning books, including The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Alfred A. Knopf, 2025), Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), and Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Professor Daut holds a bachelor’s degree in English and French from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
A scholar of French, Francophone, Caribbean, and Haitian literary studies, Professor Glover joined the Yale faculty in 2023 after teaching French and Africana studies at Barnard College in New York City. Throughout her career, she has published a variety of edited collections and monographs, including A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (Duke University Press, 2021) and Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon (Liverpool University Press, 2010). She is also an award-winning translator of Francophone fiction and non-fiction. Professor Glover received her bachelor’s degree in French history and literature and Afro-American studies from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in French and Romance philology from Columbia University.