Teaching Haiti (eBook)

Approaching Haitishistory and culture from a multidisciplinary perspectiveThis volume is the first to focus on teaching about Haitis complex history and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective. Making broad connections between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, contributors provide pedagogical guidance on how to approach the country from different lenses in course curricula. They offer practical suggestions, theories on a wide variety of texts, examples of syllabi, and classroom experiences.Teaching Haiti dispels stereotypes associating Haiti with disaster, poverty, and negative ideas of Vodou, going beyond the simplistic neocolonial, imperialist, and racist descriptions often found in literary and historical accounts. Instructors in diverse subject areas discuss ways of reshaping old narratives through womens and gender studies, poetry, theater, art, religion, language, politics, history, and popular culture, and they advocate for including Haiti in American and Latin American studies courses.Portraying Haiti not as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere but as a nation with a multifaceted culture that plays an important part on the worlds stage, this volume offers valuable lessons about Haitis past and present related to immigration, migration, locality, and globality. The essays remind us that these themes are increasingly relevant in an era in which teachers are often called to address neoliberalist views and practices and isolationist politics.Contributors: Ccile Accilien | Jessica Adams | Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken | Anne M. Franois | Rgine Michelle Jean-Charles | Elizabeth Langley | Valrie K. Orlando | Agns Peysson-Zeiss | John D. Rib | Joubert Satyre | Darren Staloff | Bonnie Thomas | Don E. Walicek | Sophie Watt