Monique Allewaert

Monique Allewaert is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work bridges literary analysis with political and environmental theory, focusing on colonial and postcolonial contexts in the Western hemisphere. She explores how colonialism shaped personhood, community, and ecological relationships through literary forms.

• B.A. in English and Political Science, University of California, Irvine
• M.A. in English, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Ph.D. in English, Duke University

Allewaert’s research uncovers overlooked dimensions of colonial-era personhood and environmental interdependence. Her scholarship connects early American literatures to contemporary ecological thought, emphasizing the plantation complex as a site of ecological and political transformation. She also investigates tropes like the "Plantationocene" and insect-based knowledge systems in colonial contexts.

Her publications reveal intersections between environmental catastrophe, colonialism, and literary form. These works span topics from Bartram’s cartographic poetics to Makandal’s semiotics, while her current projects include a study of 18th-19th century Atlantis mythologies and a Sawyer Seminar on environmental and colonial catastrophes.

Allewaert’s teaching includes courses on colonial/postcolonial literatures, literature and environment, and seminars on Phillis Wheatley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. She has served on editorial boards for American Literature and Resilience, and her work contributes to debates about ecological personhood and hemispheric American studies frameworks.