The Latest
The Film ‘Dual Citizen’ Launches Caribbean Tour Across Trinidad, Guadeloupe And French Guiana
Following its opening at the Miami Film Festival before a sold-out audience and a screening at the DC Caribbean FilmFest, presented at the American Film Institute’s AFI Silver Theatre, Haitian-American filmmaker Rachelle Salnave is taking her feature documentary DUAL CITIZEN into the Caribbean.
Journal of Haitian Studies Spring 2026 – Volume 32, Number 1
SPECIAL ISSUE ON VODOU
VODOU EPISTEMOLOGIES: KNOWLEDGE IN CEREMONY
VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SACRED
VODOU HISTORIES, PAST AND PRESENT
BOOK REVIEWS
Celebrating the Life and Work of Michael Dash – A Virtual Event (Oct. 2, 2026)
Please join us for an event honoring the life and work of Michael Dash. Panelists will offer reflections and remarks, followed by an open session on Zoom where all are welcome to share memories and stories.
Call for submissions: ‘Queer Creoles and Creolization in Global French Contexts’
What might it mean to think Creole and Queer together? By moving beyond the confines of distinct disciplinary boundaries, can we forge new understandings of Queer Creole worldmaking? We ask contributors to consider how gender- and sexually nonnormative, expansive, and creative lives take shape through Creole languages, Creole aesthetics, and Creole imaginaries across the French-speaking world. Drawing on foundational thinkers such as Wilson Harris, Édouard Glissant, and Kamau Brathwaite, this issue approaches creoleness not as a fixed identity but as an open, relational process, what Harris calls an “unfinished genesis,” and what Glissant theorizes as a movement away from singular origins toward a “limitless métissage,” in which elements are transformed through unpredictable encounters. In this sense, creolization offers a critical framework for rethinking identity, belonging, and relation beyond stable categories, raising the question of how queerness might both inhabit and further unsettle these processes.
Global Emerging Writers Fellowship: Creating Access and Opportunity (Sept. 30, 2026)
The Global Emerging Writers Fellowship provides five emerging Haitian writers with the opportunity to participate in a fully supported, nine-month literary and professional development experience. Each Fellow receives individualized coaching, a full Conference Works Package—including keynotes, workshops, intensives, panels, receptions, and special events—along with airfare, ground transportation, six nights of lodging, and a daily meal stipend. Fellows will also connect with literary agents, publishers, and industry professionals; participate in a dedicated seminar with the Haitian keynote speaker; attend post-conference workshops with leading authors and industry experts; and receive one-on-one coaching focused on both craft and career development.
Film Screening: The Man By The Shore / L’Homme sur les Quais (Oct. 2, 2026)
Set in the Haiti of the 1960s, during the dictatorship of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, this highly symbolic tale of Haiti’s hopes and desires follows a woman who is haunted by a man in her nightmares.
The Artist (Formerly) Known as Louis Rigaud
In 1963, Yale University’s Peabody Museum accessioned seventeen nineteenth-century portraits of Haitian revolutionaries, heads of state, and military figures from the United States National Museum, an entity of the Smithsonian. That same year, Saul H. Riesenberg, a curator of ethnology at the U.S. National Museum, wrote to Cornelius Osgood, curator of anthropology at the Peabody, that he “had not been able to learn anything about the painter, L. Rigaud,” whose signature appeared at the bottom of each painting. When Peabody staff later formally catalogued the paintings after five decades, they realized no one had learned much in the intervening years. Working with existing scholarship, however, staff at the Peabody came to believe the paintings were the work of Louis Rigaud.
Ayiti’s 1987 Constitution: Lessons & Conversations (Sept. 30, 2026)
Ayiti’s 1987 Constitution was a historic blueprint. Is it the national blueprint that our homeland needs at the moment or not? Scholars will each ruminate on one aspect of the Constitution for a total of three topics. They will address feminism, sovereignty, security, and contemporary constitutional concerns in Ayiti.
‘A Year and A Day. Leonore Mau and Haiti’: Book Launch & Conversation (Sept. 24, 2026)
A Year and A Day. Leonore Mau and Haiti is a poly-phonic inquiry into the photographs that Leonore Mau (1916-2013) took in Haiti during the 1970s. Essays and interventions by artists and authors from diverse fields illuminate, contextualize, analyze, and challenge the German photographer’s work, revealing its many layers. Leonore Mau’s oeuvre opens a space for decolonial and critical reflection on political, economic, cultural, and personal entanglements, on aesthetics, as well as on the ethics of taking, viewing, and using photographs today.
Call for Papers: ‘Writing the Francophone Caribbean Woman: Memory, Resistance, Imagination’
Following the success of our previous bilingual issue of MaComère which was dedicated to the Hispanophone Caribbean, this peer-reviewed journal by the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS) invites submissions for a special bilingual issue focused on women’s writing in the Francophone Caribbean.
This issue seeks to explore the literary, cultural, political, linguistic, religious and imaginative worlds shaped by Francophone Caribbean women writers across genres, generations, and diasporic spaces. We welcome scholarly and creative engagements with voices emerging from Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, French Guyana, and the wider Francophone Caribbean diaspora.
Felix Jean-Louis participated in the documentary “The Troubled Island”
Haitian Studies Association’s board member Felix Jean-Louis, participated in the short documentary ‘The Troubled Island’ directed by Desha Dauchan in Film and Media at UC Irvine.
The documentary is about South Central Artist Noni Olabisi who was a fixture in the area and painted many murals as well as other works. The documentary centers on one particular mural based on the opera by William Grant Still, ‘The Troubled Island,’ which contains a libretto partially written by Langston Hughes. Felix was asked to serve as a historian and contextualize Haiti, the Revolution, and Langston’s relationship to the country.
Regine O. Jackson was a panelist at the Atlanta World Cup premiere of “The Tropic Sun and His Eyes”
HSA President, Regine O. Jackson, was a panelist at the Atlanta World Cup premiere of an independent feature film shot entirely in Cap Haitien, Haiti, ‘The Tropic Sun and His Eyes’.
The in-person event was held at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College. The post-screening discussion and Q&A with the filmmaker, Mr. Elisee Junior St. Preux, was moderated by Dr. Edvige Jean-Francois, an award-winning, multilingual global journalist and the inaugural executive director of the Center for the Studies on Africa and Its Diaspora at Georgia State University. Mr. Muhammad Abdullah, the Vice President and General Manager of Mountain Arctic Pacific USA at The Coca-Cola Company (previously Vice President and General Manager for the Caribbean) and Dr. Regine O. Jackson, Dean of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Media & Arts and Professor of Sociology at Morehouse College.
Impact of Supreme Court TPS ruling on Haitians, Syrians and tens of thousands in the US
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the Trump administration can end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haitian and Syrian migrants, putting roughly 356,000 people at risk of losing work permits and facing deportation. To discuss the impact on Haitians in the US, we’re joined by Francois Pierre-Louis of Faith in Action International in New York City. We then hear from Krish Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge, to understand the wider implications of the ruling on the future of TPS.
Responding to the Supreme Court decision on TPS
The Haitian Studies Association condemns the majority decision by the United States Supreme Court allowing the federal government to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for approximately 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. This decision to permit blatantly racist, discriminatory actions against Haitian migrants will have far-reaching effects for them, their families, and communities. Last week, we hosted an important dialogue on the state of immigration for Haitians in the US – the status of which changes regularly, subject to court decisions and inhumane policies. As we collectively ask what we can do in today’s context, we encourage you to watch the public recording of Update on Haitian Immigration in the United States where this unfortunate outcome was discussed by experts: Gabrielle Apollon, Geralde Gabeau, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, and Darlène Dubuisson. During this conversation, many resources and calls to action were shared and we share them with you below and on our website. Mobilizing the Senate is all the more critical in the days to come.