Bennetta Jules-Rosette

Bennetta Jules-Rosette is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and the Director of the African and African-American Studies Research Center (AAASRC) at the University of California, San Diego. AAASRC has recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary on the UCSD campus since 1994. Professor Jules-Rosette’s areas of interest include contemporary sociological theory and semiotic studies of religious discourse, tourism, and African art and literature. She has conducted extensive research in France, Congo (DRC), Zambia, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Sénégal, and has also published nine books and over one hundred and twenty articles. She has visited 52 nations in Africa where she served as a representative of the U. S. State Department. Her most recent books include Black Paris: The African Writers’ Landscape (University of Illinois Press, 1998), Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (University of Illinois Press, 2007), and African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture, co-authored with J. R. Osborn, (University of Illinois Press, 2020). She is currently working on a new book on the legacies of Black Utopias.