An award-winning author, scholar, and professor specializing in Haitian history and culture, her most recent book, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe(Knopf, 2025), winner of the James Tait Black Prize in Biography and the Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, explores the fascinating life of Haiti’s only king while delving into the complex history of a 19th-century Caribbean monarchy.
Her articles on Haitian history and culture have appeared in over a dozen magazines, newspapers, and journals including, The New Yorker (“What’s the Path Forward for Haiti?”), The New York Times (“Napoleon Isn’t a Hero to Celebrate”), Harper’s Bazaar (“Resurrecting a Lost Palace of Haiti”), Essence (“Haiti isn’t Cursed. It is Exploited”), The Nation (“What the French Really Owe Haiti”), and the LA Review of Books (“Why did Bridgerton Erase Haiti?”). She has been the recipient of several awards, grants, and fellowships for her contributions to historical and cultural understandings of the Caribbean, notably from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers (NYPL), the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Haitian Studies Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Robert Silvers Foundation.
Daut graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a B.A. in English and French in 2002 and went on to teach in Rouen, France as an Assistante d’Anglais before enrolling at the University of Notre Dame, where she earned a Ph.D. in English in 2009. Since graduating, she has taught Haitian and French colonial history and culture at the University of Miami, the Claremont Graduate University, and the University of Virginia, where she also became and remains series editor of New World Studies at UVA Press. Appointed to the faculty at Yale University in 2022, she is currently the Chester D. Tripp Professor of Black Studies and French.
Named a Guggenheim and a Cullman fellow in 2026, Daut lives in the New Haven, CT area with her spouse and children.
An award-winning author, scholar, and professor specializing in Haitian history and culture, her most recent book, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe(Knopf, 2025), winner of the James Tait Black Prize in Biography and the Phillis Wheatley Literary Award, explores the fascinating life of Haiti’s only king while delving into the complex history of a 19th-century Caribbean monarchy.
The dramatic story of a pivotal figure in the Haitian Revolution, who shook the Atlantic world to its core.
Born to an enslaved mother in Grenada, Henry Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before joining the Black freedom fighters of Saint-Domingue in their quest to gain independence from France. But, at one point,...
Marlene L. Daut, a literary and intellectual historian of the Caribbean, has been named the Chester D. Tripp Professor of Black Studies and of French, effective July 1.
Haiti International Film Festival announces 2026 selections ahead of 11th edition The Hollywood festival, themed “Konnesans,” will honor Yale professor Marlene Daut, actress...
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Museum of the American Revolution created The Declaration’s Journey, a landmark exhibition that traces the evolution and global impact of this founding document since 1776. The exhibition features artifacts, documents, and works of art related to the declarations of independence issued by France, Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Korea, and more.
As the Museum’s curators and scholarly committee worked to develop The...
French Center of Excellence Lecture Series: The First Crowned Monarch in the New World - The Rise and Fall of Haiti’s Henry Christophe Thu, October 8, 2026 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Thompson Library, Multipurpose Room 165 Add to Calendar Slave. Revolutionary. King. Taken together, these words describe only one man: Henry Christophe I of Haiti. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the island of Grenada, he first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping enslaved Africans in...
