Call for papers 2021: “Nou La Pi Rèd Toujou! Embodying a New Praxis”

The world has forever changed in the course of the past year. The Covid-19 pandemic with its 3 million death toll has left families devastated throughout the world and created major social, political and economic shifts everywhere as well as the need to adapt to new means of communication. It has also been a time of unprecedented worldwide re-awakening and wide ranging protests against racism, white supremacy, state sanctioned violence and unequal life conditions. People of all generations and all creeds and color have rallied to demand justice, stand against oppression of all sorts, and demand respect for human rights worldwide.

In Haiti and throughout the world, people are protesting against neoliberal austerity, state corruption, the shift to authoritarianism, unbridled repression and racism. This past year will go down in recent Haitian history as one of the most tumultuous and difficult years for the people of Haiti. Moments such as these oblige scholars and professionals to do more than talk or write. We are compelled to come together to think critically and productively about how theory and practice intertwine and how to incite meaningful change.

Our 32nd annual conference was held on-line in October 2020. This year the 33nd annual conference of the Haitian Studies Association in Washington, D.C. is a call to focus on our praxis as Haitianists, and to examine the ways we work within and against transnational discourses, economic structures, practices of racialization, and local and international policies. Thinking through our professional, disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses, we ask: What does truly transformational scholarship look like? How do we foreground perspectives that have historically been excluded and paint a more complete picture of Haiti’s past and the possibilities for her future?