Michelle Bumatay

Associate Professor
Coordinator and Graduate Advisor, French Program

Bumatay profile image

Contact Information

mbumatay@fsu.edu
Diffenbaugh 303B
Office Hours

T/Th 11 a.m.-12 p.m.

About

Associate Professor Michelle Bumatay (Ph.D., UCLA) specializes in francophone Africa and contemporary France. Her interdisciplinary research centers on literature and visual culture (comics, film, and art) from the 19th to the 21st centuries. She has contributed to numerous anthologies on global and francophone comics and has articles in several journals dedicated to contemporary French and Francophone studies and African studies.

Her book, On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (Ohio State University Press), is the first in-depth study in English about Black francophone cartoonists. It explores the diversity of cartoonists’ artistic, narrative, and material practices and illustrates the reparative dimensions of their work. You can listen to Professor Bumatay discuss the book in detail on the “New Books Network” podcast.

Alongside her research, Professor Bumatay serves on several editorial boards for journals and book series dedicated to French & Francophone Studies and Comics Studies. Additionally, she is the organizer of the Winthrop-King Institute’s Global Africas series. Established in 2020, this interdisciplinary event series explores Africa’s richness through dialogues between culture and research.

French

African and Diasporic Francophone literature, culture, and history

20th & 21st century French and Francophone studies

Film, media and comics studies

Postcolonial studies

Migration studies

Book

On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power. The Ohio State University Press, 2025

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • “Francophone Comics by African Digital Natives: Forming (as) Inclusive Afrotopias.” Francosphères 15 1 (2026) 81-100.
  • “Francophone Afrotopias.” Francosphères 15.1 (2026) 1-7.
  • “L’Afrotopia, la pluridisciplinarité, et l’imagination: Un entretien avec Felwine Sarr.” Francosphères 15.1 (2026) 9-15.
  • “Comics as Commemoration? The tirailleurs sénégalais and World War I.” Francosphères 10.1 (2021) 63-77.
  • “BD reportage or Exotic Travel Journal?: L’Afrique de papa and the Intermedial Gaze.” Études Francophones 32 (2020) 13-35.
  • “African Bande Dessinée Festivals & Competitions: Participation, Patronage, and Performance.” Research in African Literatures 50.2 (2019) 35-48.
  • “The 4th Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award-Winning Essay: Notre histoire and Madame Livingstone: travels in time.” Contemporary French Civilization 42.2 (2017) 141-169.
  • “Postcolonial Interjections: Jean-Philippe Stassen Illustrates Heart of Darkness and We Killed Mangy-Dog.” Alternative Francophone 1.8 (2015) 18-36.
  • “Humor as a Way to Re-Image and Re-Imagine Gabon and France in La vie de Pahé and Dipoula.” European Comic Art 5.2 (2012) 45–66.
  • Michelle Bumatay and Hannah Warman, “Illustrating Genocidaires, Orphans, and Child Soldiers in Central Africa.” Peace Review 24.3 (2012) 332-339.
  • “La collaboration à distance: Entretien avec Alain Mabanckou.” Paroles gelées 25. 1 (2009) 27-34.

Book Chapters

  • “Comics and Collaborative Creativity in Sargassum: Histoire(s) d'une marée brune.” Homo Sargassum: The Exhibition, eds. Martin Munro and Vanessa Selk (Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, 2025) 24-27.
  • “Framing France in the Indian Ocean: Of Shipwrecks and Fertile Women.” Graphic Narratives of Resistance: Advocating for Representation and Social Justice in French-language Bandes Dessinées, eds. Jennifer Boum Make and Charly Verstraet (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) 247-261.
  • “The Feminine Plural in Africa and the Diaspora: Quartets of Women in Aya de Yopougon and La vie d’Ébène Duta.” Drawing (in) the Feminine: Bande Dessinée and Women, ed. Margaret C. Flinn (The Ohio State University Press, 2024) 124-141.
  • “BD Reportage or Exotic Travel Journal? L’Afrique de papa and the Intermedial Gaze.” Intermediality in French-Language Comics & Graphic Novels, eds. Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey, and Fabrice Leroy (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2022) 101-125. (expanded version of earlier article)
  • “Picturing the (Silent) History of Immigration in France and in French Bandes Dessinées,” Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis, ed. Nhora Serrano (Routledge, 2021) 149-161.
  • “Plural Pathways, Plural Identities: Jean-Philippe Stassen’s ‘Les Visiteurs de Gibraltar,’” Postcolonial Comics: Texts, Events, Identities, eds. Benita Mehta and Pia Mukherji (Routledge, 2015) 29-43.

Book Reviews

  • “Review of The Performance of Listening in Postcolonial Francophone Culture by Jennifer Solheim.” Contemporary French Civilization 45.2 (2020) 258-260.
  • “Review of La fabrique des classiques africains: Écrivains d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone (1960-2012) by Claire Ducournau.” H-France Review 18.94 (2018).
  • “Review: The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art.” Cinema Journal 56.2 (2017) 155-160.

Public Writing and Media

Francophone Afrotopias

Senegal: Past and/as Present

(Post)Colonial Migration

Education and Identity Formation in Francophone Africa

French Cinema

French Comics

Contemporary France

Introduction to Global French Studies (graduate seminar)

Faculty

Featured Books