HAITI AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAS
MARCH 6-7, 2003.
Cole Assembly Room (all sessions), Amherst College.
Organized by Jana Evans Braziel, CISA Fellow
Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College
LECTURERS | SCHEDULE | HOTEL INFORMATION
The Five College Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA) will sponsor the interdisciplinary colloquium Trans-American Crossroads: Haiti and the Making of the Americas to explore the historical, cultural, literary, and political import of Haiti within the Americas over the last two centuries since the General Slave Revolt of 1791 in colonial Saint Domingue and the establishment of the Republic of Haiti in 1804.
COLLOQUIUM LECTURERS:
Sophia Cantave (Doctoral Candidate, Tufts)
Alexandra Célestin (Doctoral Candidate, Harvard)
Myriam J.A. Chancy, Visiting Associate Professor in Women’s Studies at Smith College and Senior Editor of Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, is a Haitian writer and scholar born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and raised in Quebec City and Winnipeg. Chancy is also the author of two groundbreaking books about Caribbean authors, Framing Silence: Haitian Women’s Literature of Revolution (Rutgers University Press, 1997) and Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (Temple University Press, 1997).
Valery Chanlot (Doctoral Candidate, Harvard)
Carrol F. Coates, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York, Binghamton, has written and published extensively on Haitian literature, Haitian diasporic literatures, and translation. Coates has also translated numerous works by Haitian writers into English, including Jacques-Stéphen Alexis’s In the Flicker of an Eyelid (2002); Alexis’s General Sun, My Brother (1999); René Depestre’s Festival of the Greasy Pole (1990), all of which were published in the CARAF series (Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French) by University Press of Virginia.
Charlene Désir is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research work addresses the school adjustment of Haitian immigrant children in US schools. She also holds a Masters in School Psychology and works as a School Counselor in the Cambridge, Massachusetts Public School system.
Leslie Desmangles, Professor of Religion and International Studies at Trinity College, is a leading scholar of Vodou and other African diasporic religions. Desmangles is author of The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti (University of North Carolina, 1992), one of the most important scholarly books on Haitian Vodou and a 1994 Choice Outstanding Academic Book.
Gerdès Fleurant, Associate Professor of Music at Wellesley College, is a well-known ethnomusicologist whose research and publications explore the Rada and Kongo rites of Vodou; he is also a founding member of the academic organization KOSANBA: Congress of Santa Barbara/Congres de Santa Barbara/Kongre Santa Barbara, which is devoted to the academic study of Vodou. Fleurant is author of Dancing Spirits: Rhythms and Rituals of Haitian Vodun, the Rada Rite (Greenwood Press, 1996)
Georges Eugene Fouron, Associate Professor in the School of Education at SUNY-Stony Brook, was born in Aux Cayes, Haiti and migrated to New York in 1969. Author of important articles on the Haitian diaspora and Haitian immigration patterns in North American, Fouron recently published Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long-Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home (Duke, 2001), co-authored with Nina Glick Schiller.
Dany Laferrière is the author of Une Autobiographie américaine ('An American Autobiography'), a series of ten autobiographical novels: Comment faire l'amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer (1985); Éroshima (1987); L'Odeur du café: roman (1991); Le Goût des jeunes filles: roman (1992); Cette grenade dans la main du jeune Nègre est-elle une arme ou un fruit?: roman (1993); Chronique de la dérive douce: roman (1994); Pays sans chapeau: roman (1996); Le Chair du maître: roman (1997); Le Charme des après-midi sans fin: roman (1997); and Le Cri des oiseaux fous: roman (2000). Since the completion of the American Autobiography, Laferrière has published J'écris comme je vis (2000), a series of interviews with Bernard Magnier, and Je suis fatigué: essai (2001).
Mary Renda, Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Mount Holyoke, is the author of Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), which recently won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize awarded by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for a first book.
Nina Glick Schiller, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire, has published widely on immigration and transnationalism. With Cristina Blanc-Szanton and Linda Basch, she co-authored Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Routledge, 1994) and edited Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Most recently, Glick Schiller published Georges Woke Up Laughing: Long-Distance Nationalism and the Search for Home (Duke, 2001), co-authored with Georges Eugene Fouron.
Curtis Small, Lecturer of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, completed the Ph.D. in French at New York University in 2001. Small’s dissertation, “Cet homme est une nation”: The leader and the collectivity in literary representations of the Haitian Revolution, explored gendered myths about paternity and patria in literature about the Haitian Revolution.
The Colloquium will also feature a drumming performance by Gerdès Fleurant, art exhibits by painters Barbara Nesin and Marilene Phipps, and a viewing of Raoul Peck’s Profit and Nothing But! (2001), which examines the devastating effects of international economic policies on Haiti.
SCHEDULE
THURSDAY, MARCH 6
1:00 pm - 1:15 pm Welcome: Opening Remarks
Session I
1:15 pm - 3:15 pm
Long-Distance Nationalism: Haiti's 10th Département and Transborder Citizenship
Georges Eugene Fouron, SUNY-Stony Brook
Nina Glick Schiller, University of New Hampshire
3:15 pm - 3:45 pm Coffee and Tea
Session II
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Haitian American Children in U.S. Public Schools: Cultural Translations, Second Languages
"Unthinking a Chimera': Combining Fieldwork and Literature in U.S. 'Haitian Valleys' " by Sophia Cantave, Tufts
"Angle se yon lang, Kreyol se lang mwen', A Look at the Politics of Language and Intimacy among Haitian American Youth" by Valerie Chanlot, University of Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle; Harvard
"Rethinking Success in the American Paradigm: Haitian Parents' Transnational Adaptation in U.S. Academic Settings" by Alexandra Celestin, Independent Scholar
"Temwen: Haitian Students Recount their School Reality from 1990-1996" by Charlene Desir, Harvard
6:15 pm - 8:15 pm Dinner Recess
Session III
8:30 pm - 10:00 pm
"Cette grenade dans la main du Negre est-elle une arme ou un fruit?":A Reading by Dany Laferriere
FRIDAY, MARCH 7
8:45 am - 9:15 am Morning Reception: Coffee
Session IV
9:30 am - 11:30 am
Gender, Violence, Desire: Revolutionary Beginnings, Imperialist Interventions, and the Violent Making of the Americas
"Haiti and the Making of American Empire" by Mary Renda, Mount Holyoke College
"Gender and Sexuality in Literary Representations of the Haitian Revolution" by Curtis Small, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
11:45 am - 1: 15 pm Lunch Recess
Session V
1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
"The gods do not die": Vodou in New "New Worlds" (Haiti, Diaspora, and Religion)
"Continuity and Change: Vodou in the Haiti and in the Diaspora" by Leslie G. Desmangles, Trinity College
"The Promise of Applied Ethnomusicology in Third World Development: The Case of Haiti" by Gerdes Fleurant, Wellesley College
3:30 pm - 3:45 pm Coffee and Tea
Session VI
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Trans-American Literatures: Haiti and the Americas
"Hybrid Realities: Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba" by Myriam J.A. Chancy, Arizona State University; Smith
"Dany rewrites Laferriere: 'Cette grenade ... ' " by Carrol F. Coates, SUNY-Binghamton
6:15 pm - 8:15 pm Dinner Recess
Session IV
8:30 pm - 10:00 pm
Viewing and Discussion: Raoul Peck's Profit and Nothing But! (2001)
HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS
Conference Hotels
Holiday Inn Express Hotel Suites. 400 Russell. Hadley, MA. 413/582-0002.
Conference rates: Wednesday, March 5 and Thursday, March 6: 9 plus tax. Friday, March 7: 9 plus tax . Please be sure to mention that you are attending the “Haiti Conference.” [On bus line and minutes by bus from downtown Amherst and the Amherst College campus; reservations must be made before February 5, 2003.]
Howard Johnson. 401 Russell. Hadley, MA. 413/586-0114.
Conference rates: Wednesday, March 5 and Thursday, March 6: plus tax . Friday, March 7: plus tax. Please be sure to mention that you are attending the “Haiti Conference.” [On bus line and minutes by bus from downtown Amherst and the Amherst College campus; reservations must be made before February 5, 2003.]
University Campus Center. 1 Campus Center Way. University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Amherst, MA. 413/549-6000.
Conference rates: All nights: for one person; per night for up to four individuals; king-size rooms and rooms with two double beds available. Please be sure to mention that you are attending the “Haiti Conference.” [On UMass-Amherst campus, on bus line, and minutes by bus from downtown Amherst and the Amherst College campus; reservations must be made before February 19, 2003.]
Inns and Bed and Breakfasts
Lord Jeffery Inn. 30 Boltwood Avenue. Amherst, MA. 413/253-2576.
[Across from the Amherst Common and adjacent to the Amherst College.]
Allen House Victorian Inn. 599 Main Street. Amherst, MA. 413/523-5000. [www.allenhouse.com]
[Walking distance from downtown Amherst and Amherst College.]
Black Walnut Inn. 1184 North Pleasant Street. Amherst, MA. 413/549-5649.
[On bus line and minutes by bus from downtown Amherst and Amherst College campus.]
Emily’s Amherst Bed & Breakfast. Amherst, MA. 413/549-0733.
Ivy House Bed & Breakfast. 1 Sunset Court. Amherst, MA. 413/549-7554.
The Parsonage Bed & Breakfast. Amherst, MA. 413/549-1466.
Other Area Hotels
Econo Lodge. 329 Russell. Hadley, MA. 413/586-0715.
[On bus line and minutes by bus from downtown Amherst and the Amherst College campus.]
Quality Inn. 237 Russell. Hadley, MA. 413/584-9816.
[On bus line and minutes by bus from downtown Amherst and the Amherst College campus.]
University Lodge. 345 North Pleasant Street. 413/256-8111.
[On bus line and minutes by bus or foot from downtown Amherst and the Amherst College campus.]
Sponsored by Five Colleges, Incorporated; the Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas; The Corliss Lamont Lectureship for a Peaceful World fund at Amherst College; the Departments of English, Women and Gender Studies, and American Studies at Amherst College; the Office of the Dean of Students at Amherst College; the Departments of Communication, English, Women’s Studies, and French and Italian at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst; the Departments of French, Afro-American Studies, Comparative Literature, and Anthropology at Smith College; the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies at Hampshire College; and the Department of American Studies at Mount Holyoke College.
For general inquiries about the 2002-2003 Colloquium or the Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas, please contact Jana Evans Braziel by email at jebraziel@amherst.edu or by telephone at 413/542-8581. You may also mail correspondence to Jana Evans Braziel at 1 Johnson Chapel, Department of English, Amherst College, AC Box #2234, Amherst, MA 01002.
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