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Announcements & Statements (64)
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.
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Film Konbit Kolektif – Spring 2026 Series
The Film Konbit Kolektif, a collaborative effort of the Haitian Studies Association (HSA) with CUNY Haitian Studies Institute (HSI) at Brooklyn College, presents the Spring 2026 Film Series which features short and feature films on Women and Women’s Health.
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Haitian Studies in Dialogue - A Pre-Conference Symposium
The Haitian Studies Association (HSA) and the Haiti-DR Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) are pleased to invite proposals from PhD students, early career researchers, and advanced (senior) scholars to participate in a one-day symposium to be held at the Paris Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel (14th arrondissement) on May 25, 2026 from 0900 until 1700.
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Conference (3)
Haitian Studies in Dialogue - A Pre-Conference Symposium
The Haitian Studies Association (HSA) and the Haiti-DR Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) are pleased to invite proposals from PhD students, early career researchers, and advanced (senior) scholars to participate in a one-day symposium to be held at the Paris Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel (14th arrondissement) on May 25, 2026 from 0900 until 1700.
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37th Annual Conference – Post Conference Wrap-Up
The Haitian Studies Association marks the bicentennial of the 1825 indemnity with a call for proposals that consider the interconnected themes of restitisyon [restitution] and reparasyon [reparation]. We welcome submissions that engage calls for reparative justice for plantation slavery and its legacies, including restitution for payments France demanded in exchange for recognition of Haitian sovereignty. The conference will feature presentations that address historical actions and manifestations of these colonial relations today. By examining reparation and restitution we hope to arrive at a future that reflects Haitian epistemologies and considers Haitian histories and political realities as well as our national ethos.
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37th Annual Conference - General Information
General Information about HSA's 37th Annual Conference
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Emerging Scholars (19)
Emerging Scholars Café (Sept. 26, 2025)
Emerging Scholars invites you to the relaunch of its Emerging Scholar's Cafes on September 26, 2025 at 8pm CET/ 2pm EST/11am PST. This cafe brings Andry-Frestner Joseph of the Babes Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca of România into conversation with Mamyrah A. Douge-Prosper Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Studies and International Relations at UC Irvine. Joseph will present parts of his Master's thesis research which critically examines how foreign interventions and the dominance of NGOs have weakened the Haitian government's ability to implement effective public policies in rural areas, advocating for more inclusive and locally driven development approaches that empower rural families and align with sustainable development goals. His presentation will be followed by Douge-Prosper's comments on his work.
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The Mapou: Peer Support Groups
THE MAPOU: RASIN GROUPS FOR EMERGING (AND EMERGED!) SCHOLARS seeks to hold space for any member of HSA to have the opportunity to build professional relationships that foster community, accountability, and career advancement/discernment. Mapou participants commit to joining a Rasin Group that meets throughout the year. Mapou meetings are structured around a set of questions that help move professionals toward the program goals of building intentional community, creating accountability, and supporting professional advancement.
The Mapou relies on an unwavering commitment to being in attendance and fully participating in assigned Rasin Groups. Participants are asked to commit to attending all 4 meetings with their Rasin Group and to communicate with their peers when they are unable to participate. All HSA members are encouraged to participate, regardless of tenure, race, age, gender, sexuality, or religious/spiritual practice, and should be willing to work towards forming an inclusive, decolonized Rasin Group.
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Call for Emerging Scholar Award Applications (Sept. 15, 2024)
The Emerging Scholars Committee of the Haitian Studies Association invites applications for the following 2024 awards. Award recipients will be honored at the 36th Annual HSA Conference in NYC, from October 10-13, 2024.
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Environment Blog (6)
Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations
We are pleased to post excerpts from this report to our working-group blog. Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law and The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law have succeeded in exposing to view the connections among racism, colonialism, extraction, in/justice, and the state of Haiti’s ecosystems. Among other achievements, the report draws from the lived experience of Haitians on the ground in Haiti, and it lists nineteen organizations with which the authors collaborated, all of them developing strategies for adaptation and survival. The authors likewise consulted thinkers outside of Haiti, notably the philosopher Olúfémi O. Táíwò, a leading voice on reparative justice. We cannot separate ecology from reparative justice, and we believe that this report makes a powerful call for reparations to Haiti.
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Edikasyon pou anviwònman nan Lakou Kajou
Problèm anviwònman nan peyi d Ayiti se yon pwoblèm grav ki gen anpil aspè. Nan konsyans pa m, premye fwa pwoblèm anviwònman peyi m te frape m, se lè Jacques Cousteau te vin fè rechèch ann Ayiti. Anpil pami nou te pran chòk lè li te montre jan debwazman peyi nou te afekte lanmè peyi a. Nou te wè foto ak fim (Haiti :Waters of Sorrow, 1986) ki te montre ki jan debwazman Ayiti te dekale mòn yo epi te lage twòp tè nan lanmè a. Malgre nou te aprann lekòl, sou jan agrikilti nan mòn ka lakòz degradasyon sòl la, malgre nou konn wè dlo k ap desann ak labou lè gen lapli, se imaj Cousteau yo ki mete pwoblèm nan klè pou mwen. Tande ak wè se de (2).
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Microplastics and Environmental Health: Identification of the Environmental Hazards in Haiti
Over the past several decades, various studies have highlighted the impact of microplastics (MP) on living organisms. By definition, MP refers to all plastic particles with a size less than 5 mm in diameter according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency of the United States (NOAA). They are themselves pollutants and act as vectors for the transport of various types of chemicals in natural ecosystems. Depending on their characteristics, they are easily introduced into the environment by wind and heavy rains and persist there due to their low solubility. They can be found in: seawater, freshwater, agroecosystems, atmospheric, food and aquatic environments, drinking water, natural biota as well as other remote locations (Lambert et al., 2014).
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Journal of Haitian Studies (24)
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
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Journal of Haitian Studies Fall 2025 – Volume 31, Number 2
SOLIDARITIES AND DIVISIONS ACROSS THE CARIBBEAN
CREATIVE FORMS OF TEMPORALITY, HISTORY, AND BIOGRAPHY IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON SARA E. JOHNSON’S ENCYCLOPEDIE NOIRE: THE MAKING OF MOREAU DE SAINT-MERY’S INTELLECTUAL WORLD
RESEARCH NOTE
REVIEWS
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Journal of Haitian Studies Spring 2025 – Volume 31, Number 1
REVOLUTIONARY ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE ANCIENT CLASSICS
TRAUMA AND RESISTANCE: CARRYING HISTORY IN THE BODY
EFFORTS TO BUILD AND UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY AND SOVEREIGNTY
HONORING HAITI’S LUMINARIES
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON CARLO A. CELIUS’S CREATION PLASTIQUE D’HAÏTI : ART ET CULTURE VISUELLE EN COLONIE ET POSTCOLONIE
REVIEWS
DOSSIER: CONGRES PATRIOTIQUE DE SAUVETAGE NATIONAL
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Members' Corner (31)
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.
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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.
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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.
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Opportunities (40)
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.
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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.
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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.
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Past Conferences (91)
37th Annual Conference - Photos
Collection of photos from HSA's 37th Annual Conference in Pittsburgh.
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2025 Call for H.S.A. Award Nominations (Aug. 31, 2025)
The Haitian Studies Association welcomes nominations for the following 2025 awards.
Award for Excellence: This award honors a person or organization for their years of stellar contributions to the scholarship, literature, arts, or culture of Haiti.
Award for Service: This award recognizes a person or an organization for their years of dedication and service to the Haitian Studies Association, the field of Haitian Studies, or the people of Haiti.
Life Time Achievement Award: The HSA Life Time Achievement Award is given at no special interval to recognize the entirety of a person’s life achievement and his/her academic and professional contributions to the field of Haitian Studies.
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Call for Applications: Emerging Scholars Award & The Michel-Rolph Trouillot Fund
The Emerging Scholars Committee of the Haitian Studies Association invites applications for the following 2025 awards. Award recipients will be honored at the 37th Annual Conference, “1825 | 2025: Restitisyon ak Reparasyon” in the University of Pittsburgh, PA, October 23-25, 2025.
We are also looking for graduate volunteers to help during our conference.
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Past Events (133)
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.
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'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.
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Update on Haitian Immigration in the United States (June 18, 2026)
The event brings together immigrant rights advocates, lawyers, and scholars to provide an update on Haitian immigration in the United States. Panelists address the volatile and shifting immigration landscape for Haitians, the SCOTUS TPS case, and Congressional TPS advocacy. This timely conversation is for the public and will help clarify misconceptions about current immigration policy and procedures.
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Past Working Groups (0)
PDFs (7)
Haitian Studies in Dialogue: Emerging Scholars Bridging Dyasporas in France, the United States, and Beyond (May 25, 2026)
The study of Haiti, like the country itself, is caught between colonial and neo-colonial currents. For nearly four decades the Haitian Studies Association, based in the United States academy, and its scholars have played key roles in defining Haitian Studies. U.S. regional hegemony has drawn Haitian migrants to its shores, increasing the number of people interested in the study of Haiti. This growth in scholarship focused on Haiti and Haitian diasporic communities is sustained and advanced by the formation of the Haitian Studies Association, the Haitian Studies Institute at Brooklyn College (New York), and the Journal of Haitian Studies. These institutions were born from activism and political organizing, but they also exist in relation to the historical legacies of Cold War-era area studies (1940s-1990s), and with the development of Black/Africana Studies departments from the 1960s onward. Haitian Studies in the United States, then, is a product of specific historical developments, local and state funding opportunities, and community-based socio-political mobilization, but it is also vital in this era of global crises. The United States’s continuing intervention in Haiti as well as its inhumane treatment of Haitian migrants and asylum seekers require ongoing response from experts to provide Haiti-informed perspectives.
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Haitian Studies in Dialogue - A Pre-Conference Symposium
The Haitian Studies Association (HSA) and the Haiti-DR Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) are pleased to invite proposals from PhD students, early career researchers, and advanced (senior) scholars to participate in a one-day symposium to be held at the Paris Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel (14th arrondissement) on May 25, 2026 from 0900 until 1700.
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Town Hall Update (online event): 'Decolonizing Haitian Studies' (June 26, 2021)
As a follow-up to members' priorities expressed at the 2020 Town Hall meeting, our June event will focus on the problem of coloniality in the field of Haitian Studies and our strategy to decolonize the HSA. All are invited to hear from scholars examining the question of decolonization from the standpoint of their respective disciplines and research interests. We will consider the dynamics of knowledge production, alongside issues of global inequality and anti-blackness, language, ethical collaboration, citational politics and other research practices within the interdisciplinary field of Haitian Studies. Finally, we will describe the status of our Open Access database, a digital archive which aims to provide free access to scholarship by HSA members.
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Photos & Videos (60)
'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.
Read More »
Update on Haitian Immigration in the United States (June 18, 2026)
The event brings together immigrant rights advocates, lawyers, and scholars to provide an update on Haitian immigration in the United States. Panelists address the volatile and shifting immigration landscape for Haitians, the SCOTUS TPS case, and Congressional TPS advocacy. This timely conversation is for the public and will help clarify misconceptions about current immigration policy and procedures.
Read More »
Reading Frederick Douglass through a Haitian Lens (July 1, 2026)
The Haitian Studies Association (HSA) honors the work of Frederick Douglass by reading and reflecting on the Haitian Kreyòl translation of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”/"Kisa jou kat jiyé vle di pou nèg nwa" in the context of Haitian studies and the Haitian diaspora in the US. Frederick Douglass engaged directly with Haiti as U.S. ambassador from 1889-91 and his "Lecture on Haiti" at the Chicago World’s Fair (1893). The reading will be followed by a panel to discuss the translation and consider Douglass’ legacy and relationship with Haiti.
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Upcoming Events (2)
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.
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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.
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Working Group – Environment (9)
Climate Injustice in Haiti and the Case for Reparations
We are pleased to post excerpts from this report to our working-group blog. Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law and The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law have succeeded in exposing to view the connections among racism, colonialism, extraction, in/justice, and the state of Haiti’s ecosystems. Among other achievements, the report draws from the lived experience of Haitians on the ground in Haiti, and it lists nineteen organizations with which the authors collaborated, all of them developing strategies for adaptation and survival. The authors likewise consulted thinkers outside of Haiti, notably the philosopher Olúfémi O. Táíwò, a leading voice on reparative justice. We cannot separate ecology from reparative justice, and we believe that this report makes a powerful call for reparations to Haiti.
Read More »
Edikasyon pou anviwònman nan Lakou Kajou
Problèm anviwònman nan peyi d Ayiti se yon pwoblèm grav ki gen anpil aspè. Nan konsyans pa m, premye fwa pwoblèm anviwònman peyi m te frape m, se lè Jacques Cousteau te vin fè rechèch ann Ayiti. Anpil pami nou te pran chòk lè li te montre jan debwazman peyi nou te afekte lanmè peyi a. Nou te wè foto ak fim (Haiti :Waters of Sorrow, 1986) ki te montre ki jan debwazman Ayiti te dekale mòn yo epi te lage twòp tè nan lanmè a. Malgre nou te aprann lekòl, sou jan agrikilti nan mòn ka lakòz degradasyon sòl la, malgre nou konn wè dlo k ap desann ak labou lè gen lapli, se imaj Cousteau yo ki mete pwoblèm nan klè pou mwen. Tande ak wè se de (2).
Read More »
Microplastics and Environmental Health: Identification of the Environmental Hazards in Haiti
Over the past several decades, various studies have highlighted the impact of microplastics (MP) on living organisms. By definition, MP refers to all plastic particles with a size less than 5 mm in diameter according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency of the United States (NOAA). They are themselves pollutants and act as vectors for the transport of various types of chemicals in natural ecosystems. Depending on their characteristics, they are easily introduced into the environment by wind and heavy rains and persist there due to their low solubility. They can be found in: seawater, freshwater, agroecosystems, atmospheric, food and aquatic environments, drinking water, natural biota as well as other remote locations (Lambert et al., 2014).
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Working Groups (13)
The Rights to Live Creatively: Haitian Feminist and Queer Worldmaking (May 20, 2025)
We convene for Haitian Flag Day (May 18) to honor Haitian creativities and celebrate the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Haitian Studies that centers intersections of race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, political movements and artistic expression in Haiti and by Haitians. At a time when Haiti faces dire impediments to its sovereignty and stability as an independent Black nation, as renewed attacks against Haitians in the United States reanimate racist lies and xenophobia, and the substantial Haitian population in southern California faces an uncertain future, it is important to uplift and demystify Haitian culture, highlight intellectual and artistic labor, and amplify homegrown visions for autonomy and justice.
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The Rights to Live Creatively JOHS Special Issue Publication Launch (May 19, 2025)
We gather to celebrate Haitian Flag Day and the recent publication of “The Rights to Live Creatively,” a special double issue of the Journal of Haitian Studies. With 30 contributors who are academics, artists, and activists, and coming in at over 400 pages, “The Rights to Live Creatively” is the first time JOHS is centering the topics of gender and sexuality in Haiti and its diasporas – a major opening in intersectional and engaged scholarship.
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"The Rights To Live Creatively," On Gender & Sexuality In Haitian Studies (Oct. 12, 2024)
The Sexualities Working Group is a group of Haitian and U.S. American scholars and practitioners who have, since 2015 in different configurations, mobilized in coalition with Haitian LGBTQ/M-community, Vodouyizan, and all those who do not conform to sexual/gendered norms. Working in collaboration and coalition, we are dedicated to documenting, sharing, and bolstering the work of queer crusaders and all those who dare to live creatively in Haiti and its diasporas. We assemble around forms of creativity across arts and activisms, political and cultural expressions, history-making and future-birthing. We are interested in different domains of knowledge production and activism that might register, resist, and/or repair the dire impacts on gendered/sexual formations caused by systemic violence, cis-hetero-patriarchy, homophobia/transphobia, religious vitriol, and neoliberal policies. We ask, how does close attention to the lived body and embodied expression illuminate gender/sexuality as foundational to a capacious sense of the rights to live creatively? What pedagogies and praxes have served to either forward or derail the possibilities for life in Haiti? In what ways do Haitian people seize joy, create pleasures, and rest amidst confinement?