Biography
Dr. Charles is a proud natif natal (native child) of Haiti who carries a French passport and who is teaching in the United States. He completed primary education in Haiti (in Haitian Creole and French), secondary education in French Guyana (in French, with English and Spanish as second and third languages) and higher education in Bordeaux, France. He is a tenured ESL teacher for the French ministry of education and higher education (on leave) and was a tenured faculty at Université Bordeaux Montaigne (France), where he obtained all of his degrees, including his Ph.D. (2013). His dissertation was titled “The Political Integration of Mormons in the United States, from Reed Smoot to Mitt Romney.” He’s authored several articles, book chapters and reviews, and of a book ambitiously titled Tout savoir sur la religion mormone (All you need to know about Mormonism, 2018). Prior to his hire in the department of French and Italian, Dr. Charles taught for four years as a CFS-track faculty in the department of Church History and Doctrine at BYU.
Dr. Charles and his wife, Sabrina (formerly François-Haugrin), were married civilly in French Guyana (1999) and then religiously in the Frankfurt Germany Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2000). They have four children and live in Provo. Along with intellectual activities, he loves gardening, doing home improvement projects and anything else that makes him feel he is living by the sweat of his brow.
Degrees
PhD, Université Bordeaux Montaigne (UBM), France, 2013
MA, UBM, France, 2007
MA, UBM, France, 2005
BA, UBM, France, 2004
DEUG (Diploma of General University Education), UBM, 2003
DAEU (Diploma of Access to University Education, equivalent of French Baccalaureate), Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, French Guyana, 2001
Areas of Research and Interest
History and sociology of religion; Church and State; Latter-day Saints; language teaching and culture; translation and interpretation.
Languages
Haitian Creole: native; read; write; teach; translation and interpretation
French: native; read; write; teach; translation and interpretation
English: near-native; read; write; teach; translation and interpretation
Spanish: read, write and basic conversation
Portuguese (Brazil): read, basic oral comprehension
Citizenship
- Committee member (2020-22) and chair (2021-22): Mormon History Association Book Awards Committee
- Global Outreach Chair, Mormon History Association (2022-2023)
- Steering Committee Member (2019-2021): Global Mormon Studies network
- Editorial board member: BYU Studies Quarterly (2018-)
- Faculty advisor (2019-): TSOS-BYU (TSOS: Their Story is Our Story)
- Scientific Committee Member (2022-): Rechèch Etid Kreyòl (Kreyol Studies Journal)
- Committee member: Religious Education “Diversity and Inclusion” (2020-2022)
- Committee member (2019-): BYU Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Scholarship
- Committee member (2019-21): BYU Religious Education Friday Faculty Forum
Some current projects
- Guest co-editing volume 2 on “Creole, Education and Development” of the journal Rechèch Etid Kreyòl.
- Transcribing and analysing interviews mapping itineraries and trajectories of Latter-day Saints in southwestern France
- Fitting dissertation for publication
- Preparing Reed Smoot 1907 Senate speech for Latter-day Saint and Eloquence book project