Dr. Kamille Gentles-Peart is a Fulbright Scholar and critical cultural studies researcher with a focus on Afro-Caribbean feminisms, racialized body politics, and embodied decolonization practices. Her current scholarship centers thick Afro-Caribbean women and how they experience, negotiate, and resist anti-black racism and colonial discourses about their bodies.
She has written and edited several books, including Romance with Voluptuousness: Caribbean Women and Thick Bodies in the United States. She is currently working on a book project, Living in Twilight Zones: Black Women and Thick Bodies in Trinidad and Tobago, which explores the interior lives and everyday realities of thick Black women in Trinidad and Tobago who have to navigate spaces that are shaped by a complex mix of love, fetishization, reification, and hypersexualization.
Her work has also appeared in academic journals such as
Women’s Studies Quarterly,
Feminism and Psychology, and
Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. You can find more of her
work here.
Pedagogy and Teaching
Dr. Gentles-Peart is currently a professor of Communication Studies at Roger Williams University where she teaches courses that promote social justice and equity. Teaching is a practice of liberation for her, an outgrowth of her personal commitment to decolonization and social change. As such, her pedagogy is explicitly grounded in equity and social justice. Her class curricula make visible the various forms of power structures that marginalize and empower different social groups, and equip students to re-imagine social interactions in more equitable ways. She is also committed to creating classroom environments where students can challenge oppressive forces around the world - regardless of the subject matter. Her desire is to have students take ownership of course material as well as develop the capacity to disrupt and resist conventional power structures. She has taught courses in the areas of race, ethnicity and media; critical audiences studies; Afro-Jamaican popular culture and Black radical thought; anti-racist mentorship; and legacies of colonialism in international communication.
Community Work
Dr. Gentles-Peart is committed to creating spaces in the wider community that amplify and uplift African-descended women and girls. She is co-founder of the Collaborative for the Research on Black Women and Girls, which creates restorative and healing spaces for Black women and girls globally.
She also co-created and directs the North Star Collective, a regional consortium to promote reparative justice and uplift racially marginalized faculty in New England.
Books
Romance With Voluptuousness: Caribbean Women and Thick Bodies in the US
This book examines the ways in which Black women with heritage in the English-speaking Caribbean participate in, perpetuate, and struggle with the voluptuous beauty standard of the Black Caribbean while living in the hegemony of thinness cultivated in the United States. It highlights how black Caribbean women negotiate issues of body image deriving from both Caribbean and American pressures to maintain a particular body shape and contend with discourses and practices surrounding the body that aim to marginalize and exclude them from economic, social, and political spaces.
Reviews: Gender & Society, New West Indian Guide
Brand Jamaica: Re-imagining Jamaica’s National Image and Identity (edited with Dr. Hume Johnson)
This edited volume explores the current practices of branding Jamaica, particularly within the context of postcoloniality, reconciles the lived realities of Jamaicans with the contemporary image of Jamaica projected to the world, and deconstructs the current tourism model of sun, sand, and sea. The authors bring together multidisciplinary perspectives that interrogate various aspects of Jamaican national identity and the dominant paradigm by which it has been shaped.
Reviews: The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, H-LatAm, H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, New West Indian Guide
Other Selected Publications
Thick Black Women and Misogynoir in the Caribbean. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies (2025)
Controlling Beauty Ideals: Caribbean Women, Thick Bodies, and White Supremacist Discourse. Women’s Studies Quarterly (2018)
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: Black Feminist Practices and the Decolonization of Caribbean Women’s Bodies. Feminism and Psychology (2020)
Women of "Paradise:" Tourism Marketing and the Lived Realities of Jamaican Women Abroad. Brand Jamaica: Re-imagining Jamaica’s National Image and Identity, edited with Hume Johnson (2019)
Bumbah Politics: Thick Black Female Bodies in Caribbean and U.S. Scholarship. The Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics, edited by Maxine Craig (2021)
West Indian Women, Body Politics and Cultural Citizenship. Bodies Without Borders, edited by Afshan Jafar and Erynn de Casanova (2013)
Media
Beyond Equality: Mobilizing Open Education for Racial Justice | Keynote
Open Education Conference 2022
What is this "Open’" in Open Education? | Keynote Conversation w/Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani
Open Education Summit: The Equity Initiative, NEBHE 2022
Black Women, Thick Bodies, and Anti Black Racism in America | Hidden Truths Series
Roger Williams University 2021
