Haiti and the Americas

Acknowledgments

vii Acknowledgments The essays collected in this volume were presented at the “Haiti and the Americas: Histories, Cultures, Imaginations” conference held at Florida Atlantic University from October 21 to 23, 2010. We were not able to include all the contributions from that conference, but the conversations sparked by the other presentations and the audience contributions were important in the rewriting and rethinking of the essays collected here. For that reason, we want to thank everyone who took part in the conference, especially Isabelle Airey, Leslie Alexander, Diane Allerdyce, Aimee Kanner Arias, Alessandra Benedicty, Major Joseph Bernadel, Kristen Block, Graciella Cruz-Taura, Sika Dagbovie, Susan D’Aloia, Sara Fanning , Gérard Férère, Meagan Foster, Kaiama Glover, Mary Ann Gosser Esquilín, Mark Harvey, Bertin Louis, Elena Machado Sáez, Michelange Quay, Mariana Past, Jerry Philogene, Yvette Piggush, Rose Réjouis, Adam Rockenbach, Heather Russell, Melissa Sande, Patricia Saunders, Andrea Shaw, Adam Silvia, Faith Smith, Lara Stein Pardo, Robert Taber, Walteria Tucker, Adriana Umaña-Hossman, and Chantalle Verna. The conference benefited especially from the participation of a number of local nonprofit leaders: Nicole Toussaint-Prince and Dieunet Demosthene, from Toussaint L’Ouverture High School for Arts and Social Justice in Boynton Beach; Marli Lalanne and Daby Sully, from the Miami-based Konbit for Haiti; Gayle Williams, codirector of Digital Library of the Caribbean; and Rebecca Reichert, director of development at the Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas (FAVACA). All these individuals contributed to the discussions and investigations that form the context for this volume. The “Haiti and the Americas” conference received generous funding from a number of departments, programs, and offices at both Rice University and Florida Atlantic University. From Rice, we want to thank Nicolas Shumway, dean of humanities; and José Aranda, chair of Hispanic studies. From FAU, we want to thank Manjunath Pendakur, dean of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters; Michael Moriarty, interim vice president for research; Charles Brown, vice president for student affairs; Corey King, associate vice president and dean of students; Barry Rosson, dean of the graduate college; Edward Pratt, dean of undergraduate studies; Maria Santamarina, university diversity officer; Noemi Marin, director Acknowledgments viii of the peace studies program; Farshad Araghi, chair of sociology; Mike Harris, chair of anthropology; Michael Horswell, chair of languages, linguistics , and comparative literature; Wenying Xu, chair of English; Nicole Jacobsen, visual communications coordinator; Jackie Simpson, event planning specialist; and Larry Faerman, associate director of event planning and union programs. We also received financial support and in-kind donations from the Florida Humanities Council, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, and Puma.Creative; thanks to Claire Breukel, Mark Coetzee, and Andrew Wallace for helping us with those donations. The details of the conference were efficiently coordinated by Jacqueline Nichols , FAU Department of Philosophy program assistant; and Valorie Ebert, master’s candidate in English. A number of other English graduate students donated their time in working on the conference, including Johanna Ayala, Kelly DeStefano, Jacob Henson, Jason Kaplan, Michael Linder, Jessica Pitts, and Emilija Stanic; we would also like to thank FAU’s Philosophy Club and their president, Yona Rabinowitz, for helping out with the conference. Publishing with the University Press of Mississippi has been a pleasure , thanks especially to the work of Walter Biggins, Bill Henry, Katie Keene, Shane Gong Stewart, and Todd Lape. Johanna Ayala compiled the index for this book, with her usual care and attention to detail. HAITI AND THE AMERICAS This page intentionally left blank ...