Rachel Jean-Baptiste

Professor Rachel Jean-Baptiste joins Stanford as the Faculty Director of the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and The Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden Family Professor in Feminist and Gender Studies.  

She is a historian of intimacy, investigating matters of emotional, bodily, and familial engagement in colonial and post-colonial French speaking-Africa and the Atlantic World.  She investigates the ways in which these matters come into public view and debate, and how individuals, societies, institutions and governments try to regulate them. She is the author of two books – Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon (Ohio University Press, 2014) – as well as articles in numerous peer review journals and edited volumes.  

She teaches about the ways in which societies across the globe and in different historical moments have lived and conceived of gender relations, particularly in everyday life, in the law, and in governance and politics. Applying her extensive administrative experience, she is excited to leverage Stanford's legacy in technological innovation to cultivate new coursework and undergraduate and graduate student curricular offerings in gender and technology/technologies.  

Co-President, Coordinating Council for Women in History
Editorial Collective, Gender and History
Board of Directors, African Studies Association