Professor Glover's scholarship delves into postcolonial literature and cinema from francophone regions, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her critical work interrogates canon formation, examining the reception of authors like the Haitian Spiralists within literary traditions. She also explores ethical practices and the representation of self-care in Caribbean prose fiction. Her translation work brings significant francophone literary works to a wider readership.
Kaiama L. Glover examines Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean literature whose female protagonists enact practices of freedom that privilege the self, challenge the prioritization of the community over the individual, and refuse masculinist discourses of postcolonial nation building.
Dance on the Volcano tells the story of two sisters growing up during the Haitian Revolution in a culture that swings heavily between decadence and poverty, sensuality and depravity. One sister, because of her singing ability, is able to enter into the white colonial society otherwise generally off limits to people of color. Closely examining a society sagging under the white supremacy of the French colonist rulers, Dance on the Volcano is one of only novels to closely depict the seeds and fruition of the Haitian Revolution, tracking an elaborate hierarchy of skin color and class through the experiences of two young women. It is a story about hatred and fear, love and loss, and the complex tensions between colonizer and colonized, masterfully translated by Kaiama L. Glover.