J. Michael Dash

Professor Jean Michael Dash (July 20, 1948 – June 2, 2019) was a scholar of francophone Caribbean literature. He was born in Trinidad and Tobago and educated at the University of the West Indies.

Professor Dash was a professor in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture and in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA) at New York University, where he had been on the faculty since 1999. Dash earned bachelor’s (1969) and doctoral degrees (1973) from the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica. Prior to coming to NYU, Dash had been a professor at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, where he also chaired its Department of Modern Languages and Literatures as well as its Department of French. He also had stints as a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico and Howard University and as a lecturer at Nigeria’s Ahamadu Bello University and the University of the West Indies in Barbados.

A specialist of Haitian literature and French Caribbean writers, he brought a new focus to French-language writers writing outside of France. Dash’s publications include Edouard Glissant (1995), The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (1998), Haiti and the United States (1988), and Culture and Customs of Haiti (2001).