Re–interpreting the Haitian Revolution and its
Cultural Aftershocks, 1804 – 2004

15–18 June 2004
Faculty of Humanities and Education
Department of Liberal Arts
University of the West Indies
St. Augustine
Trinidad and Tobago

Venue: Learning Resource Centre

Programme


 

Tuesday 15 June 2004

 

9.30 am –11.30 am      Registration

11.30 am –12 noon      Informal Welcome,

                                    Dr Ian Robertson, Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Education,

`                                   Dr Elizabeth Walcott–Hackshaw,

                                    Dr Martin Munro

 

12 noon –1.30 pm        Lunch

 

 

1.30 pm –3.00 pm      Parallel sessions

 

SESSION 1: THE REVOLUTION AND CARIBBEAN HISTORIES

 

Moderator: Brinsley Samaroo

Auditorium A

 

Bridget Brereton (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)
“Hé St Domingo, songé St Domingo”: Haiti and the Haitian Revolution in the Political Discourse of Nineteenth–Century Trinidad

 

Martin Munro (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)
Petrifying myths: Lack and Excess in Caribbean and Haitian History

 

Lloyd Best (Trinidad & Tobago Institute of the West Indies)

Haiti: A Problem of Classification in the Schema of Plantation Economy



SESSION 2: HISTORY, ART AND DANCE

Moderator: Carolyn Williams

Auditorium B

 

Patricia Mohammed (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)

The Sign of the Loa

 

Arnaldo E Valero (Instituto de Investigaciones Literarias ‘Gonzalo Picón Febres,’Merida, Venezuela)
El rostro imaginado: Representaciones pictóricas de la comunidad haitiana

 

Celia Carey Weiss (University of California, Riverside)

Kreyol Steps and Moving Words: Re-Choreographing the Revolutionary Peasant in Port-au-Prince

 

SESSION 3: THE REVOLUTION AND AFRICA

Moderator: Maximilien Laroche

Auditorium C

 

Edmond Mfaboum (Paris)
La réception de la révolution haïtienne auprès de l’élite intellectuelle africaine, francophone

 

Lieve Spaas (Kingston University, UK)
Fighting for independence in Haiti and the Congo

 

Kahiudi Claver Mabana (UWI, Cave Hill, Barbados)
Jacques Roumain et le roman africain francophone. Retour aux sources et repères mythiques


3.00 pm –3.30 pm        Tea

 

 

3.30 pm –5.00 pm      Parallel sessions

 

SESSION 4: RE-INTERPRETING HEROES I: TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE

Moderator: Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw

Auditorium B

 

Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool)
The travelling revolutionary: twentieth-century translations of Toussaint Louverture

 

Renée Larrier (Rutgers University)

Toussaint Louverture’s Sword: Artifacts and the Power of Representation

 

E. Anthony Hurley (Stony Brook University, NY)
Césaire's Toussaint Louverture: A Revolution in Question

 

 

SESSION 5: REVOLUTION, RACE AND PHILOSOPHY

Moderator: Randolph Hezekiah

Auditorium A

 

Georges Fouron (Stony Brook University, NY/Haiti)
Theories of race and the Haitian revolution

 

Michele Alexandre (University of Memphis)

Towards a More Nuanced Haitian Ethic of Resistance

 

Juan Antonio Hernández (University of Kentucky)
Hegel, los cimarrones y los zombies: a propósito de “Hegel and Haiti”de Susan Buck-Morss


 

SESSION 6: REPERCUSIONES EN AMÉRICA LATINA

Moderator: Marie-José N’Zengou Tayo

Auditorium C

 

Alejandro E. Gómez (Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas)
La Capitanía General de Venezuela en tiempos de la Revolución Haitiana

 

Valeria Coronel (New York University)
Ilustración, esfera pública plebeya y descolonización. Lazos entre Eugenio Espejo, Francisco de Miranda, y la revolución Haitiana

 

 

5:15 p.m. –6:15 p.m.    Visit to the Eric Williams Collection, Main Library

                                    OR

                                    Book Launch: Rhoda Reddock, Caribbean Masculinities, Social Sciences Lounge.

                                   

 

6.30 pm –8.00 pm        Official Opening: UWI Vice–Chancellor the Honourable Rex Nettleford and UWI St Augustine Principal, Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie

                                    Followed by cocktail reception at Principal’s residence.

 

9.00 pm                        Shuttles return to hotels


 

Wednesday 16 June 2004

 

9.00 am –10.30 am    Parallel sessions

 

SESSION 7: HISTORICAL LITERATURE AND LITERARY HISTORY I

Moderator: Edwidge Danticat

Auditorium A

 

Elizabeth Walcott–Hackshaw (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)
Lahens’Revolution or the Words Within

 

Rachel Douglas (University of Edinburgh)
An Aborted Miracle: The Significance and Aftermath of the Haitian Revolution in Frankétienne's H'éros-chimères

 

Évelyne Trouillot (Haiti)
La révolution haïtienne dans la fiction: Absente ou méconnue?

 

 

SESSION 8: THE REVOLUTION, RIGHTS AND WRONGS

Moderator: Lloyd Best

Auditorium B


Daniel Atchebro (UN Working Group on People of African Descent, Geneva)

La Révolution haïtienne de 1804 ou le chaînon manquant de la doctrine des droits de l’homme

 

Jean-Robert Lafortune (Miami/Haiti)

The Success of the Haitian Revolution in 1804 –Threat or Opportunity for the West?

 

Neil Roberts (University of Chicago

The Concept of Freedom in Afro-Caribbean Political Thought

 

 

SESSION 9: PERSPECTIVAS CUBANAS

Moderator: Nicole Roberts

Auditorium C

 

Graciela Chailloux Laffita (Casa de Altos Estudios “Don Fernando Ortiz”Universidad de La Habana)
Revolución en Haití y “miedo al negro”en Cuba

 

Elzbieta Sklodowska (Washington University, St Louis)
El imaginario haitiano en la narrativa breve de Antonio Benítez Rojo

 

Raimundo Gomez Navia (Cuba)

Adrien Sansaricq: Un luchador por la libertad de Haití en el siglo XX


10.30 am - 11.00 am     Coffee

 

 

11.00 am –12.30 pm     Parallel sessions

 

SESSION 10: WRITING DIASPORA I

Moderator: Joëlle Vitiello

Auditorium A

 

H. Adlai Murdoch (University of Illinois –Urbana)
Mapping Haitian Transnationalism: Migration and the Writing of Haitian Identity

 

Jana Evans Braziel, (University of Cincinnati)
Daughters of Défilée, Daughters of Dyaspora: Edwidge Danticat's Alterbiographic Narratives of Ayiti-Nation and Diaspora

 

Ayodele Hippolyte

A Literature in Exile: Marie Chauvet and Dany Laferrière

 

SESSION 11: FOLK CULTURE, LANGUAGE AND RESISTANCE

Moderator: Laënnec Hurbon

Auditorium B

 

M. Thomas J. Desch-Obi (Baruch College, CUNY)
“Koup Tet:”Afro-Haitian stick fighting and the Haitian Revolution

 

Yves Lejean (Haiti)

Language and Education in Haiti from 1804 to 2004

 

SESSION 12: EDUCATION AND THE REVOLUTION

Moderator: Jeannette Morris

Auditorium C

 

Sandra Gift (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)
The Haitian Revolution: Contemporary Challenges for Educators

 

Nadève Ménard (Trinidad/Haiti)
Where do we go from here? Going beyond the revolution in the Haitian curriculum

 

Ella Turenne (Columbia University)
Using Art to Interpret and Teach the Haitian Revolution


12.30 pm –2.00 pm      Lunch

 

 

2.00pm –3.30 pm       Parallel sessions

 

SESSION 13: Writing Diaspora II

Moderator: H. Adlai Murdoch

Auditorium A

 

Joelle Vitiello (Macalester College, MN)
Traces of the Revolution in Contemporary Fiction

 

Brenna Moremi Munro (University of Virginia)
Edwidge Danticat: Haiti's Migrant Letters

 

Paula Morgan (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)

“Where Nightmares are Heirlooms”: Violence and Female Subjectivity in Danticat’s Fiction

 

Patricia Ismond (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)

Haitian Poetics –Haitian Politics: the Works of Edwidge Danticat

 

 

SESSION 14: NEW WORLDS APART: THE UNITED STATES AND HAITI I

Moderator: Glenn Harris

Auditorium B

 

Edward E. Baptist (Cornell University)
Hidden in Plain View: The Evasion of Haiti in the Historiography of the United States

 

Edward White (Louisiana State University)
Vested Interests: An American Merchant Looks at Haiti

 

Michael J. Drexler (Bucknell University PA)
Novel History: Haiti, Horrors, and Leonora Sansay’s Secret for America


SESSION 15: RE-INTERPRETING HEROES II

Moderator: E. Anthony Hurley

Auditorium C

 

Jorge Victoria Ojeda (Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán, México)
Juan Francisco: La Interpretación de una Historia no Contada de la Revolución

 

Carolyn Williams (University of North Florida, Jacksonville)
The Haitian Revolution and a North American Griot: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture by Jacob Lawrence

 

Gislaine Bucher–Miloch (Lycée Frantz Fanon, Trinité, Martinique)
Toussaint mythe ou mythisation?


3.30 pm                        Shuttles from campus to hotels

6.15 pm                        Shuttles from hotels to campus

 

7.00 pm –9.00 pm        Readings and commentaries from Derek Walcott and Edwidge Danticat followed by reception, Social Sciences Area

 

10.00 pm                      Shuttles return to hotels


 

Thursday 17 June 2004

 

9.00 am –10.30 am    Parallel sessions

 

SESSION 16: ANTÉNOR FIRMIN, RACE AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Moderator: Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban

Auditorium A

 

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (Rhode Island College)
Anténor Firmin, Pioneering Anthropologist, Pan–Caribbeanist, and Pan–Africanist: His Legacy and Continuing Relevance

 

Ghislaine Geloin (Rhode Island College)
De De L’Égalité des races humaines, Anténor Firmin à la Conférence panafricaine de 1900,

Benito Sylvain : deux champions haïtiens de la cause des Noirs

 

Richard Lobban (Rhode Island College)
Anténor Firmin and Egyptology

 

Gérarde Magloire-Danton (New York University)
The Haitian Revolution, Memory and Haiti’s Humanist Thinkers: The Examples of Anténor Firmin and Jean Price-Mars


SESSION 17: HISTORICAL LITERATURE AND LITERARY HISTORY II

Moderator: Dany Laferrière

Auditorium B


Amy Reinsel (University of Pittsburgh, PA)

National Subjectivity in the Romantic Poetry of Oswald Durand

 

Ginette Adamson (Wichita State University)

Le traitement des héros de l’histoire d’Haïti dans le théâtre de Jean Métellus

 

Pamela Toner (University of Central Florida)
Harvesting Independence: Roumain’s Masters of the Dew

 

 

SESSION 18: CROSSING BORDERS: CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES, RESISTING TYRANNIES

Moderator: Bridget Brereton

Auditorium C

 

Nicole Roberts (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)
Haitian and Dominican e/migration and the (re)construction of national identity in the poetry of the 3rd  generation.

 

Elizabeth Jones (Tulane University)

Labor’s Revolution Betrayed? Twentieth Century Haitian Labor Practices in Revolutionary Context

 

Valerie Youssef (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine)
Bat teneb - Beating back the darkness: Haitian women’s description of their own resistance

 

 

10.30 am –11.00 am    Coffee

 

 

11.00 am –12.30 pm  Parallel Sessions

 

SESSION 19: NEW WORLDS APART: THE UNITED STATES AND HAITI II

Moderator: Mervyn Alleyne

Auditorium A

 

Kathleen Gyssels (University of Antwerp)

La Révolution haïtienne vue par un Américain: “Un crapaud transpercé à une lance”dans Le Soulèvement des Ames Madison Smartt-Bell

 

Virginia Stewart (Roanoke College VA)

Bartleby, Babo, and Baby Budd: Haiti’s Presence in Herman Melville’s “Killer B”Novellas

 

William Scott (New Mexico State University)

Revolutionary Acts of Translation: Language and Freedom in Guy Endore’s Babouk (1934)

 

 

SESSION 20: ALEJO CARPENTIER AND THE REVOLUTION

Moderator: Graciela Chailloux Laffita