Faculty Directory

Summary of Expertise

Creative and feminist ethnography, performance, multimedia installation and performance. Public anthropology. Carribbean and African Diaspora.

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D.,  Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Honors, Awards and Grants

Invited Artist, 15th Edition of Biennale of Dakar, Senegal, 2024

57th Faculty Research Lecture, UCSC, 2024

American Ethnological Society, First Artist in Residence, 2024

Bogliasco Foundation Residency Fellowship, 2023

Excellence in Teaching Award, UCSC, 2021-2022

Center for Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellow, UCSC, 2020-2021

Invited Artist, 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2020

Connecticut Center for the Book Award in Poetry, 2018

American Anthropologcal Association (AAA) Anthropology in Media Award (AIME), 2018

Haitian Studies Association (HSA) Excellence in Scholarship Award, 2015

Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Wesleyan University), 2015

Selected Publications

Books:

A Call to Rasanblaj: Black Feminist Futures and Ethnographic Aesthetics. Ed and Intro Penelope Papaillas. Greek translator Vangelis Poulios. TRosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Athens, Greece. 2023             

Because When God Is Too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 2017. Connecticut Center for the Book Award in Poetry, 2018; longlist, PEN America Open Book Award, 2017.

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post Quake Chronicle. Foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. 

Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importing, A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Honorable Mention, Gordon K. and Sibylle Lewis Book Award (Caribbean Studies Association) 2008.

Edited Collections:

Caribbean Rasanblaj. Invited Guest Editor, double issue of e-misférica--NYU’s Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics. 2015, vol 12, no 1&2, May. Online Journal. 

Pawol Fanm Sou Douz Janvye (Women’s Words on January 12th). A collection of women’s stories of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and its aftermath. Special editor and contributor In the Archives section of Meridians Journal of Feminism, Race and Transnationalism. January 2012, Introduction pp 91-98, article pp 141-143.

Journal Articles, Essays, Photography, and Poetry:

"Tools of the Trade or Women's Works" special issue on Indgenous Feminisms Across the world Part I. Visual Essay. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Vol 23 No 1, 2024, pp 175-181.

"Bwapin Rasanblaj: A Curated Conversation with Lyndon K. Gill. Journal cover, visual essay and interview of special issue on Autotheory /Autoethnography. Feminist Studies. Vol 49 no 2/3. 2023 pp 328-351.

"Indigo" Journal cover and statement. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Vol 22 No 2. 2023, pp 518-519.

"A Priestess' Salutation: A Study in Movement" Journal cover and photo essay. Trilingual. Frontiers Journal. Vol 43 No 3, 2023, pp 240-249.

"Ola Thunder" Journal cover. Feminist Formations. Volume 34. Issue 2. Summer 2022. 

“An Equitable Human Assertion” #28 theme "Centering Design  for Coexistance in a Time of Crisis" theme of KERB: Journal of Landscape Achitecture. Melbourne: Uro Publications. November, 2020, pp 70-75.

Black Breath (e): On ti Rasanblaj for teh People. Photographs and poetry. Interim Poetics. Issue 37.3. 2020.

“Skin Castles: Some Not so Random Notes on Performing a Taxonomy of Rages against Empire” in Special Issue: Exhibiting the Experience of Empire: Decolonizing Objects, Images, Materials and Words. Guest Editors: John Giblin, Imma Ramos and Nikki Grout. Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture. July-September 2019 no 159-160 pp 521-540.

“Seven Keywords for this Rasanblaj” photographs and essay in Anthropology Now. 2016, vol 8, no 3, pp 122-125.

“Pwen #1,4, 7, 9, 11, 14 & 16 of “VooDooDoll: What if Haiti Were a Woman.” Transition Magazine, Special Haiti issue. Editors: Laurent Dubois and Kaiama Glover. 2013, June, issue 111, pp 104-111. 

 Art Writing

"Constant's Consort and Marvelous Work" Interview essay with artist in Myrlande Constant: The Work of Radiance. Exhibition Catalogue edited by Jerry Philogene and Katherine Smith. Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, California. 2023 pp 49-61.

"Nou La: On Didier William's Spaciousness" SugarCane Magazine. November, 2022.

"Avant Garde Rasanblaj: A Meditation on Pòtoprens"  in Pòtoprens Exhibition catalog edited by Leah Gordon and Joshua Jelly Shapiro. Brooklyn, NY: PioneerWorks, 2022. pp 292-299. 

Book Chapters: 

“Writing Anthropology and Such or Once More with Feeling.”  In Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment. Editor, Carole McGranahan  Durham: Duke University Press. 2020, pp 251-256. 

“It all Started with a Black Woman: Reflective Notes on Writing/Performing Rage” in Are All the Women Still White? Rethinking Race, Expanding Feminisms. Editor, Janell Hobson. Albany: State University Press. 2016, pp 257-278.

“Going Home Again, and Again and Again: Coffee Memories, Peasant Food and the Vodou That Some of Us Do” in Geographies of the Haitian Diaspora. Regine O. Jackson, editor.  New York: Routledge. June 2011, pp. 265-280. 

Selected Presentations

 Keynotes and Plenaries:

“Rasanblaj Mobilities” Caribbean Women (Post) Diaspora: African: Caribbean Interconnections.  London South Bank University, London, England, July 12, 2018

“Critical Thoughts on Interdisciplinarity and Rasanblaj” Inaugural School of Language, Culture & Society Resident, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, April 25, 2018

“BlackLiberation Rasanblaj Redux” Fourth Annual Kamau Brathwaite Lecture, Culture Studies, The University of the West Indies-Cave Hill, Barbados, February 2, 2018.

“Why Rasanblaj, Why Now?: New Salutations  to the Four Cardinal Points in Haitian Studies” Keynote at the 29thAnnual Conference of Haitian Studies Association, Xavier University, New Orleans. LA, November 3, 2017.

“Crossings & Rasanblaj: Performing Anthropological Interventions” Inaugural Collective Visions Keynote. Departments of Anthropology and Sociology. Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA. October 26, 2017 

“Contemplating Absences & Distances: A Remix of the Value of Blackness” Keynote Experiences of Migration and Transformations in the Ecotones, University of Poitiers, France, June 23, 2017.

“Withering Pasts Or a Rasanblaj of Peculiarities” Second Annual Vanessa Knights Memorial Lecture, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Thyne, UK, March 16, 2017.

“i$land Re-Po$$e$$ed Re-reading Katherine Dunham in the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” Kathrine Dunham Research Showcase Keynote, King's College, London, May 18, 2016.

“Contemplating Absences and Distances: Quelles Sont les Besoins de Saint Domingue?”  George Priestly Memorial Lecture, Queens College CUNY, Flushing, NY, December 2, 2015.

Selected Performances

 "The Alpha and the Omegain the Letter" Decolonizing Helias Conference in Athens Greece. Online. November 2022.

“Remixed Ode to Rebel’s Spirit, or Lyrical Meditations on A Revolutionary Legacy: Haiti and Toussaint Louverture” British Museum, London, England. March 16, 2018.

“#BlackLiberationMashup” Black Arts Movement Southern Style Because the World Needs to Change Conference at Dillard University, New Orleans, LA. September 9-11, 2016.

“VooDooDoll, What if Haiti Were a Woman: On ti Travay sou 21 Pwen or An Alter(ed)native in Something Other than Fiction.”  (10) The Voodoo curated by Lucian Gomoll. Hemispheric Institute Encuentro, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. June 21-28, 2014.

“Anatomy of a Wail” New York Historical Society in conjunction with the Revolutions Exhibit, January 20, 2012