Browsing by Subject "Haiti"
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Item Caribbean: Some History(2016-08) Chambers, Eddie; Doroba, Mark (photographer)During Fall Semester 2016, the IDEA LAB in GWB Building will be showing This Ground Beneath My Feet – A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands,an exhibit by Annalee Davis, one of Barbados’ leading artists. In recognition of this, the Fine Arts Library (FAL) is showing a display, assembled by Eddie Chambers, of the Department of Art and Art History, Caribbean: Some History, which contains various publications relating to different aspects of the Caribbean, a region of the world that was, until relatively recently, more commonly referred to as the West Indies. It is a region of the world rich in many different histories. Religion, music, literature, art, and sport are amongst the many fascinating subjects of the books and other publications in this display. The largest countries of the region are those such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, followed by comparatively smaller countries such as Jamaica. Caribbean countries such as Haiti and Cuba have renowned and celebrated art histories, and this display includes several publications related to these histories. The display points to some of the ways in which publications related to the Caribbean have changed over the course of a century. Though most people of the region might identify their religion as Christianity, it is perhaps the syncretic belief systems of the region – Santeria, vodũ (voodoo),Rastafari – that the region is better known for. Of the many different types of music emerging from the region, it is perhaps reggae that dominates many people’s associations of the region’s music. Though the Caribbean region is rich in a variety of music traditions, it is certainly reggae that the region is best known for. And within reggae, Bob Marley is the singer whose music is most recognized. A great many books have been written on the late singer, and this display includes several. Despite the extensive scholarship and research coming out of the region and its diaspora, the Caribbean continues to be a misunderstood and somewhat caricatured region of the world, often regarded in the imagination of many as a holiday destination. These publications aim to present a more nuanced understanding of the Caribbean and its fascinating, multiple histories. The pan-Caribbean cricket team of the region is still known as the West Indies cricket team. It has a very distinguished history of cricketing success, particularly during parts of the mid, late 20th and early 21st century. A number of the books and publications in this display are available in FAL, PCL, and in particular, the Benson, which contains extensive material relating to the region. Photos and design by Mark DorobaItem The dialectic of blackness and full citizenship : a case study of Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic(2016-05) Romain, Jheison Vladimir; Smith, Christen A., 1977-; Arroyo, JossiannaIn 2015 the Dominican Republic enforced a series of measures to expel undocumented Haitian immigrants and unregistered Dominicans of Haitian descent. As a result, thousands of people of Haitian descent became "illegal", deportable subjects forced to either return to Haiti or live in hiding in the Dominican Republic. This thesis presents a theoretical and ethnographic reflection on this most recent citizenship crisis between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Migration carried out despite legal restrictions can be considered a modern form of resistance against racialized and historically defined social structures that disproportionately affect impoverished black people of Haitian descent. How have restrictions on migration and immigration gradually crystallized the lives of black people as less valuable than those of whites and others who fit-in with white, Eurocentric values? During a time in which international migration has gained a great deal of worldwide prominence, the question of citizenship and belonging for people of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic is a window that provides insights into the politics of illegality that have been mobilized to justify the abuse and even the killing of people who have violated established rules of border crossing. Grounded in ethnographic research carried out in the Dominican Republic and Haiti from May to July of 2015, this thesis draws on the work of Sylvia Wynter (2007), Charles W. Mills (1999), and John Rawls (1971) to contemplate the ways in which the social and economic exclusion of black people of Haitian descent has been historically promoted and justified. Further, engaging the theories of Aviva Chomsky (2004), Abdias do Nascimento (1980) and Neil Roberts (2015), the thesis argues that undocumented migration is 21st century marronage – a mode of resistance, through flight, against oppressive socio-economic structures.Item A Fresh Start for Haiti? Charting the Future of U.S.-Haitian Relations (Testimony of Maxine Waters)(U.S. Government Printing Office, 2004-03-10) U.S. GovernmentItem Haitian Refugees (Statement of Shirley Chisholm)(U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979-10-25) U.S. GovernmentItem Hollywood’s Haiti : popular culture, representation, and American exceptionalism(2022-05-05) Butler, Tia Katheryne; Wilks, Jennifer M., 1973-; Salgado, César Augusto; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Arroyo Martinez, Jossianna; Thompson, Shirley E.On January 11, 2018, during a meeting at the Oval Office about protecting the rights of immigrants from locations such as Haiti, El Salvador, and various African countries, President Donald Trump asked, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" These racist, xenophobic, and derisive remarks point to the urgency of my dissertation, Hollywood’s Haiti: Popular Culture, Representation, and American Exceptionalism. Living in a post-Trump America, we can easily see how space has been created for public declarations racial bias, prejudice, and xenophobia. With racism moving from the periphery to the forefront of American public policy, this project is critical as it a large-scale study of how certain stereotypes about the Afro-Caribbean, and Haiti in particular, have been codified through a consistent negative representation in the United States popular culture and media. This dissertation examines mass media and primary sources ranging from Hollywood’s first zombie flick, White Zombie (Halperin 1932), to more contemporary 20ᵗʰ and 21ˢᵗ century artifacts of popular culture including; The Serpent and the Rainbow and FX’s 2013 horror anthology series, American Horror Story to demonstrate the unique power media has on sustaining tropes about Haiti. Building off of works such as Kyle William Bishops How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture, Domino Renee Perez and Rachel González Martin’s anthology Race and Cultural Practice in Popular Culture, my dissertation contends that the Haiti that is seen across US media (news and entertainment) is actually an imagined Haiti that has been crafted through generations of sustained media tropes.Item “Let us forge one path together” : gender, class, and political subjectivities in a Haitian popular neighborhood(2015-05) Selby, Lynn Marie; Gordon, Edmund Tayloe; Strong, Pauline` T`; Costa Vargas, João H; Wilks, Jennifer M; Arroyo Martínez, JossiannaOver sixty years after the introduction of women’s suffrage and nearly forty years after the uneven institutionalization of representative democracy, the majority of Haitian women face mounting challenges to maintaining their livelihoods and playing more prominent roles in politics. This dissertation advances an understanding of poor urban women’s collective potential and the challenges to their self-making as agents of change. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted from 2008 to 2010 in the popular neighborhood of Matisan, Port-au-Prince, I argue how middle-aged and elder women activists are a crucial and overlooked source of hope for Haiti: they have insights, skills, and experience acquired through the political upheavals, environmental crises, and macro-economic developments of the last decades that could inform strategies for social and structural change. After providing a popular history of a prominent women's organization, I use the lives of three individual community organizers as case studies to explore the hierarchies that shape their community and activist roles and detail how their positioning within a micro-social layer also entails negotiations within networks of support and influence. Tumultuous events during my research brought to light the constraints women experience in how social responses and movements develop in spite of their significant involvement and sacrifices. Confounded by class and gender hierarchies and the stigma of residency in a popular neighborhood, these women’s political utterances are selected and filtered by middle-class women advocates and male peers. Finally, I examine how neoliberal policies and foreign intervention in Haiti have privatized the public interest and the postcolonial State and promoted the role of intermediaries in development and politics for women and the poor majority. I describe how interventions carried out in Matisan—ranging from small food donations from wealthier residents to internationally-funded disaster relief—rely on women's passive rather than active participation, exacerbate competition among them as prospective beneficiaries, and provide temporary help at best. Through my research, I aim to make legible the everyday forms of communitarianism and sociality among these women that foster community and animate grassroots politics, and further propose that these practices could be constitutive of a political platform in and of itself.Item Letter to H.B. Stenzel from Russell Raymond Voorhees on 1938-10-02(1938-10-02) Voorhees, Russell RaymondItem Letter to H.B. Stenzel from Russell Raymond Voorhees on 1938-11-08(1938-11-08) Voorhees, Russell RaymondItem Liminal lives : Haitian migration to the Barrio of La Zurza, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic(2017-12-06) Rubio-Zepeda, José Daniel; Sletto, BjørnImmigration by Haitians to the Dominican Republic is a long-standing phenomenon, and today, an estimated 210,000 Haitians live as undocumented immigrants in the Dominican Republic. Immigration from Haiti has been driven by a variety of factors, including historic labor programs designed to attract cheap labor; and poverty, political turmoil and lack of economic opportunities in Haiti. In the Dominican Republic, Haitians tend to primarily live in ethnic enclaves, including a high concentration in the capital, Santo Domingo, and particularly in the informal settlement of La Zurza. Using the concepts of “black sense of place,” liminality, and maroonage, I contend that Haitians in La Zurza have built support networks that create community and a sense of solidarity, serving as a source of resilience to contend with the precarious conditions they encounter in La Zurza daily. A survey conducted with two dozen Haitian-born residents of La Zurza shows that Haitians remain in the community for several years, suggesting that their informal support network helps them contend with racialized violence in places such as the Duarte Market in La Zurza, which serves as the principal source of employment for Haitians. However, while Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent have thus created a black sense of place through the constant (re)negotiation of their identities, their liminal, undocumented status also serves to reproduce their state of displacement and placelessness. In particular, their vulnerable position has been exacerbated by the passage of Law TC 168-13 in 2013, retroactively stripping Dominicans of Haitian descent of their citizenship and further intensifying anti-Haitian rhetoric. Undocumented Haitians thus must contend with an ambivalent legal status, which limits their social and geographic mobility and their access to economic opportunitiesItem LLILAS Hosts Haiti Photo Exhibit(Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, 2011) LLILAS staffItem The nature of the marvelous in René Depestre’s Hadriana dans tous mes rêves(2011-05) Belleroche, Jean Élie, 1968-; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Cauvin, Jean Pierre; Tissi?res, H?l?neMy goal is to study the nature of the Marvelous in René Depestre's Hadriana dans tous mes rêves. I want to demonstrate that René Depestre, in his novel, combines a number of surrealist or neo-surrealist premises that have influenced him as a Haitian writer. This goes beyond differences that can be discerned between the "Surrealist marvelous" endorsed by André Breton and the surrealists, and Alejo Capentier's "marvelous real"later proposed by Jacques Stephen Alexis as "marvelous realism" Depestre adapts Haitian natives' perceptions deep-rooted in their historical and social, cultural and religious past and ever-existing political and economical struggle. Taking into account both the surrealist perspective and the Haitian context, I shall address the complexity of the concept of the Marvelous and discuss Depestre's use of "zombification"as a form of metamorphosis, which preserves the mystical nature of Vodou as a religion that syncretizes the Roman Catholic ritual of exorcism of the Christian West and the animist and magical practices inherited from Africa. Scholars have explored the Marvelous and marvelous realism in Depestre's works as a whole, but not in Hadriana dans tous mes rêves specifically. The exclusive nature of this study will show that Depestre draws from Haiti's complex cultural ethos as well as from surrealism'es key principles, to create a hybrid Marvelous typical of Haiti and Depestre'es aesthetic as a writer.Item Portal, Issue 11, 2016(LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, 2016) LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and CollectionsItem Pouvwa pou pèp la : non-governmental organizations and community engagement in Haiti(2019-09-19) Desir, Wideleine; Sletto, BjørnFor decades, numerous NGOs, foreign and local, have implemented hundreds of projects in Haiti. I have interviewed a variety of NGOs working in Haiti to learn more about the methods used to connect communities and local government with projects in order to foster governance and organizing capacities. From local to foreign, small to large, every NGO documented here experienced different opportunities and barriers when working with community members and local governments on the implementation of projects. The following Professional Report identifies important and successful community engagement practices pursued by NGOs, but also reveals the lack of capacity building methods used in the projects described here. Based on previous academic research in the field of disaster relief and the interviews conducted, I conclude by providing recommendations for better engaging communities in an effort to build capacity within local Haitian communities and within the Haitian governmentItem Responsible advertising in Haiti(2012-12) Mégie, Annick; Drumwright, Minette E.Haiti’s advertising industry has sparked a lot of controversies within the nation in the past few years for its violations of ethics and disregard for the level of sophistication of its audience in its messages. At the local level, no legislation is set in place to protect this vulnerable population which, for the vast majority, is illiterate. Developed countries have established rules and legislation that protect consumers, particularly vulnerable consumers, from advertising’s potential harm. Little attention has been given to populations in developing countries, such as Haiti, where there is no control or regulation of advertising. In this paper, the author takes a look at the characteristics of the Haitian population and draws on examples from the local press and her direct experience as a professional in the field in order to illustrate the controversy that surrounds advertising in that country. The goal is to highlight the need for local practitioners to work towards industry guidelines that will allow for more responsible advertising in the country.Item Sé tan nou é pa ta yo: politics of Antillian identity formation(2009-12) Chanel-Blot, Mitsy Anne; Pierre, Jemima; Franklin, MariaMy report will use the 2009 Guadeloupean strikes as an ethnographic moment that reveals the complex intersection of race, culture, and nationality in the construction of Guadeloupean identity. The strikes created an environment that made even more visible the strategic negotiations of identity that are important to understanding postcolonial relationships between intimately tied nations such as Guadeloupe, Haiti, and France. I argue that Antillean identity is constructed along a racial continuum as represented by the racio-cultural extremes of Haiti and metropolitan France. Depending on the agenda—whether socio-cultural, economic, political, or any combination of the three—in politicized situations, Antilleans will highlight categories that allow for them to maximize their various, fluid positions as non-sovereign Caribbeans, as second-class French citizens, and as members of the Black diaspora with racial politics that have a complicated relationship to Blackness. By looking at how certain categories are manipulated, we can also develop a better understanding of—and even strategies for—relieving the tensions that, I believe, undermine racial and cultural cooperation for these under-researched communities in France and its territories.Item Transitory Ghosts: Haitians and Dominico-Haitians in Santo Domingo(LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, 2016) Rubio-Zepeda, JoséItem Tras à memwa : the emergence and development of French Caribbean cinema(2010-05) Wright, Meredith Nell; Tissières, Hélène; Sherzer, Dina; Wilks, Jennifer; Staiger, Janet; Cauvin, Jean-PierreIn December 1899, the Italian camera operator Giuseppe Filippi, trained by the famous French Lumière brothers, arrived in Haiti and began conducting film screenings for local audiences. Within the next two years, his Caribbean travels led him to Guadeloupe and Martinique, where he left behind him a seed of interest in an art form that, as I will demonstrate, would alternately develop and wane over the course of the twentieth century depending on funding and the turbulence of the fluctuating French Caribbean political and cultural climate. Chapters one and two provide a thorough roadmap of the development of the French Caribbean film industry and conclude chronologically, arriving at the current state of cinema in these islands. Though the debate over the existence of the industry still carries on amongst local film professionals, particularly in Guadeloupan and Martinican circles, these chapters offer compelling evidence of distinct and verifiable cinematic production. The final two chapters consist of an analysis of a set of five films, chosen for their relatively recent release as well as their thematic, aesthetic, and structural variety. This set of films constitutes evidence of a wave of films unified by their preoccupation with memory, an orientation that mirrors and reinforces a contemporary cultural movement in these islands, and by their advancement of overt, contextually relevant postcolonial political agenda.Item A tree grows in Haiti : a suitability and political ecological analysis of potential bamboo reforestation in Haiti(2012-05) Lundi, Daphne; Sletto, Bjørn; Paterson, RobertIn Haiti's largely agrarian society as well as in many other islands in the Caribbean, deforestation has become an issue that has long term, negative consequences for the livelihood of farmers and the ability of the nation as a whole to rebound after natural disasters, a frequent occurrence in Haiti. I examine past reforestation attempts in Haiti through a literature review using a political ecological framework, and I explore experiences with bamboo as a reforestation crop and its potential in the Haitian context. Drawing on this research, I conduct a GIS analysis of potential reforestation sites using bamboo in Haiti by (1) investigating and categorizing the ecological, economic and social conditions that are favorable for bamboo production, and, based on this research, (2) identifying areas particularly suitable for reforestation programs using bamboo. I conclude by providing planning and policy recommendations for appropriate production of bamboo for reforestation in Haiti.Item Unequal intimacy : redressing Black women's emigration to Dominican society in unified Haiti(2020-09-15) Monegro, Sophia; Arroyo, Jossianna; Wilks, Jennifer M., 1973-This article delves into the messy intimacies that acted as a conduit for Black women’s emigration to “the island of liberty” in the early XIX century. Reading Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner (2003) by Daniel Schafer, I argue that this biography conveniently side-steps Anna’s subjectivity as an enslaved Black woman by avoiding the unequal intimacy she was forced to share with her enslaver, emancipator, and common-law husband Zephaniah Kingsley. In the study of Anna’s life, I contribute the unconsidered coercion she likely experienced as an enslaved woman. I deploy the method of critical fabulation, as termed by Sadiya Hartman, that combines archival research with fictional narrative to fill in the ruptures created by the archive of trans-Atlantic slavery. Using Henry W. Herbert's romantic novel Guarica, The Charib Bride: A Legend of Hispaniola (1844), I use Guarica’s character as a stand-in archive for Anna’s subjectivity. Contextualizing Anna within the geo-politics of the African American emigration movement to Dominican society within Unified Haiti, this critical paring of Anna and Guarica sketches the quotidian and nimble ways these women navigated their unequal relationships with their white colonizing husbands.Item Unsettling Ideas about Africa and Blackness: Contemplating Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic(LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, 2016) Romain, Jheison