Contributors
- Contributors
Arnold Antonin is one of Haiti's best-known filmmakers. His many works include Haïti: Le chemin de la liberté (1975); Tiga: Haïti, rêve, possession, création, folie (2001); Piwouli et le Zenglendo (2002); GNB contre Attila (2004); and Le Président a-t-il le sida? (2006). Born in Port-au-Prince in 1942, Antonin is also a university professor, director of the Pétion Bolivar Cultural Center, and chair of the Association of Haitian Filmmakers. He was awarded the Prix Djibril Diop Mambety at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 for his body of work and his documentary Courage de femme. In March 2007, Le Président a-t-il le sida? won the Prix Paul Robeson at the Ouagadougou Film and Television Festival in Burkina Faso.
A. James Arnold, since publication of his Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire (1981), has been identified with the interpretation of Aimé Césaire, the Negritude movement, and broader cultural issues in the Caribbean. His edition of Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith's English translation of Césaire, Lyric and Dramatic Poetry, 1946–1982 (1990), contained a major essay on the lyric oratorio And the Dogs Were Silent and the late collection i, laminaria . . . . His latest contribution, a contrastive analysis of the first four editions of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, was published in July 2008 in Forum for Modern Language Studies.
Madison Smartt Bell is the author of twelve novels, including The Washington Square Ensemble (1983), Waiting for the End of the World (1985), Straight Cut (1986), The Year of Silence (1987), Doctor Sleep (1991), Save Me, Joe Louis (1993), and Ten Indians (1997). In 1995, All Soul's Rising, the first of his trilogy on the Haitian Revolution, was published, followed by Master of the Crossroads (2000) and The Stone That the Builder Refused (2004). Most recently he is the author of the biography Toussaint Louverture: A Life (2007). Born and raised in Tennessee, he now lives in Baltimore, where he is professor of English at Goucher College and director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing.
Mario Benjamin is one of Haiti's leading contemporary artists. Using video and multi-media, painting, installation, and other mixed media, he addresses issues of identity, ethnicity, and race. He aims to challenge preconceived notions of the driving influences and interests of Haitian artists. He has represented Haiti in numerous biennials, including Sao Paolo, Havana, Johannesburg, and Venice in 2001. Most recently (August 2007–January 2008) his work appeared in the exhibition "Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art" at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. [End Page 175]
LeGrace Benson is currently director of the Arts of Haiti Research Project and an associate editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies. She has held faculty positions at Cornell University and Wells College and is professor emerita at the State University of New York. She is author of numerous articles on Haitian art and chapters in books concerning education, the environment, and the arts in Haiti and the Caribbean.
J. Michael Dash is professor of French at New York University. He is the author of Literature and Ideology in Haiti (1981), Haiti and the United States (1988), The Other America (1998), and Culture and Customs of Haiti (2001), and has translated a number of Edouard Glissant's works, including The Ripening (1985), Caribbean Discourse (1989), and Monsieur Toussaint (2005).
Maksaens Denis is a Haitian director and video artist who works with the contrasts between the moving images of video and abstract still images, and the collusion between reality and the imaginary. In residence at the Société des Arts Technologiques, Montreal, in 2002 he presented an on-site installation "Nouveaux mondes, mondes nouveaux." The same year, he participated in the second multicultural forum of contemporary art and presented a project of urban sculptures at the Haitian Arts Museum. He has presented his work in Senegal, Mexico, and Dominican Republic. He has made experimental documentaries and videos, including L'arbre de la liberté in November 2004 on the history of Haiti, and E pluribus unum, which won the prize for best art film at the Black...
