Your H-Haiti editors, Julia Gaffield and Marlene L. Daut, as well as the book review editor, Grégory Pierrot, would like to welcome you to the inaugural post of the H-Haiti Blog!
H-Haiti is designed to promote a community of scholars, artists, and activists dedicated to constructive discussions of Haitian history, religion, politics, art, and culture.
While H-Net enjoys using the metaphor of the commons to describe the goals of these various online communities, we prefer the essence of the crossroads. In the spirit of Papa Legba (the Haitian lwa of the crossroads who acts as an arbiter between the human and non-human worlds), H-Haiti proposes a new forum dedicated to what scholar and advisory board member of H-Haiti, Gina Athena Ulysse, has called in her recent book of the same name, “New Narratives of Haiti.” H-Haiti proposes this crossroads for scholars, artists, and activists to explore and discuss Haitian history, art, politics, and culture through a lens beyond that of fear, repression, failure, and dependency. This discussion network will convene national and international scholars, artists, and cultural leaders from all disciplines and will accept submissions in English, French, and Haitian Kreyòl.
While H-Haiti will feature the requisite variety of announcements, discussion topics, and book reviews, in the spirit of encouraging more interaction and collaboration, we offer the H-Haiti Blog, which will contain guest blog posts (we invite you to contribute, too!), the first of which has been written by Erin Zavitz from the University of Montana. The second collaborative project is the #HaitiSyllabus. Please add your suggestions for the syllabus by opening a new discussion topic or by tweeting us @hnetHaiti. In the end, the goal of H-Haiti is to bring together scholars, artists, and other cultural leaders to share information and deepen our understanding and awareness of the historical role of Haiti and Haitians in the making of the modern world-system.
To learn more about your editors click on our profiles on the right-hand side of H-Haiti. We look forward to seeing you at the crossroads!
Marlene L. Daut
Julia Gaffield
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