René Kooiker

René Johannes Kooiker is interested in how novels narrate late imperialism and emerging nationalism in the circum-Caribbean, and particularly by way of the lost, damaged, or compromised archives of colonialism and slavery. More generally, he is interested in studying the Caribbean from a comparative perspective, combining Dutch, English, French, and Spanish-language sources. Before coming to Yale in 2019, he spent a year as a pensionnaire étranger at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He graduated from Amherst College with a B.A. in French and English in 2018.