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As part of its commemoration of the
bi-centenary of the Haitian Revolution, the Africana Studies
and Research Center, in collaboration with the Society for
the Humanities, Departments of History, Anthropology, Comparative
Literature, Cornell Cinema, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum
of Art will host a two-day international conference on the
significance and legacy of the slave uprisings of Saint Domingue.
The Haitian Revolution represented the first successful example
of an enslaved population seizing its freedom and creating
an independent state. Slave emancipation in Saint Domingue
in turn served as a powerful inspiration to slaves throughout
the Americas. In an age of revolutionary war when slavery,
empire, and racial hierarchies were being fiercely contested,
the establishment of the first Black republic was a matter
of intense significance in the Atlantic World.
The uprising of slaves in Saint Domingue
was a prelude to the overthrow of slavery in the Caribbean,
and although the message of liberté, egalité,
fraternité acted as crucial catalysts for slave uprisings,
the Haitian emancipation was not envisaged in the proclamation
of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The great significance
of the Revolution in Saint Domingue is that it successfully
defended the gains of the French Revolution against France
itself. Precisely because Saint Domingue was part of an imperial
space, the question of the universality of the rights of man
and the citizen was argued over in Saint Domingue as much
as in Paris. In this sense, the Haitian Revolution fundamentally
affected and shaped debates on the meanings of freedom and
citizenship in the modern world. Although Haiti was not the
first independent state in the Americas, it was the first
to guarantee civic liberty to all. In this respect, it stands
alongside the French Revolution in opening questions of slavery
and citizenship, of cultural difference and universal human
rights, to wider debate.
The conference will therefore explore
the centrality of the Haitian Revolution to both the overthrow
of New World slavery and to the re-imagination of modernity
more generally. Possible topics outlined below include reflections
on the effects of the Haitian Revolution on New World slavery,
the Black Jacobins and the idea of modernity, emancipation
and the creative imagination in transnational contexts, which
will include visual and literary production on and about Haiti.
Cornell Cinema has agreed to work on a film series to coincide
with the Conference.
Conference
Coordinator:
Fouad Makki (fmm2@cornell.edu)
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