In Memoriam: Professor Jarrod Hayes (1966-2025)

It is with deep sadness that the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures recognizes the untimely death of our former colleague, Professor Jarrod Hayes. 

Jarrod received his Ph.D from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York in 1996 and taught French and Francophone studies at Michigan from 1996 to 2018. He subsequently moved to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, where he continued to teach and conduct research in French and Francophone Studies until his death. 

His teaching and research focused on primarily on the intersection between French postcolonial studies and queer theory. At Michigan, he taught undergraduate classes on "French Colonialism and Its Aftermaths," "Metissage, Gender, and Identity in the French Caribbean," "Reclaiming French America," "How Do We Look? Desire, Seduction, and the Filmic Gaze," and "Reading Queer: Textual Strategies for LGBTQ Studies." Some of his graduate seminars included "African Sexualities," "Roots: Narratives of Origin and the Fiction of Identity," "Hard Books Made Easy (or Almost): The French New Novel and Francophone Literature," and "Proustian Perversions: Reading and the Politics of Happiness in the A la recherche du temps perdu."

His first book, Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2000. In it, he examined the ways in which representations of non-normative sexualities, gender insubordination and sexual dissidence in the French-language literatures of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia challenged homogenous and heteronormative conceptualizations of nationality and national identity that help to consolidate power in the hands of post-independence national elites. 

His second book, Queer Roots of the Diaspora, Ghosts in the Family Tree, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2016, examines the role of roots, or narratives of origin, within the African, Jewish, Armenian diasporas. In this comparative approach to queer diaspora studies, he argues that, rather than essentializing identities, the narratives analysed therein acknowledge their own fiction-making with regards to identity as well as challenge the heterosexual family trees that conventionally structure roots narratives. As a result, these stories queer the roots of diaspora to imagine diasporic communities that are diverse, not exclusive, that conjure up, not away, the ghosts of past exclusions. 

Jarrod was also the co-editor, along with Margaret R. Higonnet and William J Spurlin, of Comparatively Queer: Interrogating Identities across Time and Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), which assembles essays that queer comparative studies and theorize the importance of insisting on comparative approaches to queer studies in a "double crossing" that they playfully characterize as "going both ways." Indeed, they argue, the expression "comparatively queer" would ideally become queerly redundant if the kind of intervention into field-defining we hoped to be engaging in is successful.

In his most recent book project, Reading across the Color Line: Racialization in the French Americas, Jarrod deployed the methodology of close reading to theorize what literary studies can contribute to the critical study of race. He thereby undertook a comparatist study of racialization in the French Americas to argue that representations of race in Louisiana and the Caribbean become legible only when one abandons Anglo-American assumptions about racial distinctions. While certainly far from the first to take on commonplace understandings of race that conflate it with visible difference, this project examines texts that resist Anglo-American definitions of race, locates dissonance between these definitions and French representations of race and theorizes the resulting tensions as productive sites for the denaturalization of race as historically and culturally contingent. 

Jarrod also published more than forty essays in prominent journals and influential collections. A glance at the titles of some of these essays reveals not only his impressive range of expertise, but also an acute sense of creativity and humor: "De Groove Is in de Move: Decolonizing Sex and Sexuality in the Middle East and North African Studies," "Eatin' Tail, Suckin' Head: Moving across the French Americas with Queer Talk about Food," "Queer Double Cross: Doing (It with) Comp Lit," "From Voodoo Queens to Drag Queens: Deny Laferrieres Queer Montreal--French American, Black Atlantic City."

He served as the Associate Editor for the Australian Journal of French Studies and was on the Editorial Committees for Romance Notes, French Forum, and Found Object: A Journal of Cultural Studies. He held various positions at the MLA, including serving as a member of MLA Delegate Assembly, on the advisory committee for the PMLA, and on the executive committee of the division on Comparative Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature.

He recieved numerous awards and recognitions, including prestigious fellowships from external foundations such as Fulbright, Mellon, and ACLS, and, from UM, the Michigan Humanities award and the Institute for Humanities faculty fellowship. His publications earned him Le Prix de l'Ambassade de France Dissertation Award and the University of Michigan Press Book Award. 

Jarrod was loved and respected by colleagues and students alike. In his twenty-two years at Michigan, he made many valuable contributions to the department and the university. He served as RLL Associate Chair from 2005-2009, as Section Head for both the French and Portuguese sections for an impressive total of eleven years, as a member of the University Senate Assembly, and he took a leading role in the development of the RLL major. He directed 15 dissertations and served as a reader on many more. Professor Emeritus Bill Paulson, who helped hire him in 1996, notes that he "came to embody much of the French program's institutional memory, while also maintaining a youthful outlook that made him good at questioning our habits and suggesting new ideas and approaches in our curriculum. He was an amazingly dedicated and skillful dissertation advisor, with an almost uncanny ability to push students to do their best work while also making them feel personally and professionally supported."

Jarrod was a source of inspiration and support for many, and he is sorely missed.