Gary Wilder’s book The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005) traces empire-wide networks of science, administration, public opinion, and literature that linked colonial reformers in French West Africa to a black public sphere in Paris. His current research project, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, Utopia, examines post-World War II initiatives by African and Caribbean legislators to reconstitute France as a postcolonial federal democracy. Wilder was awarded a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, only one of ten awarded nationally in 2006, which allowed him to spend a year as a Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School. He holds a joint Ph.D. in anthropology and history from the University of Chicago and comes to the GC from Pomona College.

Photo: Rachel Lindheim