Biography
Pureum Lee is a Center for Ethics Graduate Fellow at The Murphy Institute and a PhD candidate in History, specializing in modern French and Caribbean history, empire, decolonization, and Catholicism. Her research examines how transnational currents of Third Worldism, Pan-Africanism, and Catholic progressivism shaped competing visions of liberation in the French Caribbean, and how ordinary people responded to and reshaped these visions in light of their own material needs.
Her dissertation, Between the World and the Islands: Internationalism and Popular Politics in the Decolonization of the French Caribbean, 1958–1975, explores the tensions between internationalist solidarity and popular demands for economic security in Martinique and Guadeloupe. The project asks how decolonization unfolded in societies that maintained political ties with France rather than pursuing national independence, situating the French Caribbean within broader histories of Third Worldist solidarities during the Cold War.
The Center for Ethics Graduate Fellowships provides support to outstanding Tulane doctoral students who have excelled in their fields of specialization, have demonstrated an interest in ethical questions that cut across disciplinary boundaries, and are likely to make significant contributions to teaching and scholarship in their respective fields.
Publications
Lee has two articles under review at peer-reviewed journals. The first examines how Catholic priests developed alternative visions of anticolonialism through religious reform and engagement with everyday social and economic concerns. The second analyzes the Progressive Party of Martinique's domestic campaign of Pan-Africanism and its focus on developing a creolized African culture.
Education & Affiliations
- PhD candidate, Department of History at Tulane University