Safoi Babana-Hampton

Safoi Babana-Hampton is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Michigan State University and a documentary filmmaker. Her work combines scholarly research and cinematic creation on the ethics, politics and aesthetics of historical memory, studies of intergenerational trauma and healing in the Francophone Black diaspora, postcolonial Francophone studies, transnational and diasporic expressions of identity, exploring their complex and entangled relationships with issues of class, gender, faith, national origin and race. She is the director of the award-winning documentaries Mémoire Hmong à la croisée des chemins [Hmong Memory at the Crossroads] (2015), Enfance Hmong à la croisée des chemins [Growing up Hmong at the Crossroads] (2017), and Chœurs Atlantiques, Tales from the Atlantic Beyond (2025), a transatlantic work that amplifies marginalized histories, Black diasporas, and emancipatory visions of a more just and humane future. Her two Hmong-focused documentaries, in particular, bring critical scholarly attention to the contemporary experience of the Asian diaspora in France through the lens of the Hmong refugee experience, illuminating its complex ties to French colonial history and its enduring legacies.

Holding a PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park, she currently focuses her research on postcolonial Francophone studies, transnational and diasporic dynamics, film studies, and theories of narrative and representation, in connection with issues of gender, race, class, and collective memory. A former Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Babana-Hampton has twice served as principal investigator on award-winning projects funded by the Humanities Without Walls consortium through the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Her book Réflexions littéraires sur l’espace public marocain dans l’oeuvre d’Abdellatif Laâbi (Summa Publications, 2008) critically examines the role of culture in the construction of civic consciousness and the formation of a modern public space in Morocco. She has also authored articles on a wide range of topics relating to conceptions of multicultural citizenship, the postcolonial condition, historical memory in a global context, interfaith relations, expressions of identity by French cultural minorities, and artistic hybridity in the literary and film productions of French cultural minorities, Moroccan Sephardic literature, and other Francophone literary and filmic narratives from North Africa and Québec.