About my research
My doctoral research traces how the study of folklore and music became an instrumental vehicle for international solidarity during and after the U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915-1934. I bring to life a moment when Haiti was at the center of a cosmopolitan network of anthropologists, folklorists, musicians, dancers, writers, and radicals who contributed to major contemporary discourse on revolution, freedom, and human equality. This was a time when Haiti, New York City, and the international study of African diaspora cultures became closer than ever before: even as New York banking circles had ever more control over the Haiti’s financial affairs, so too did prominent African American organizations and socialist publications begin forming alliances and organizing with Haitian intellectuals to form a formidable anti-colonial opposition. On the heels of the occupation, American cultural luminaries including Zora Neale Hurston, Alan Lomax, Katherine Dunham, Melville Herskovits, and Harold Courlander traveled to Haiti to collect and catalogue folk songs and dance. What they learned in Haiti would go on to shape the trajectory of their careers, and in turn influence future generations of artists, institutions, and intellectuals. This is the story of how Haiti contributed to the meaning of cultural revolution in the twentieth century.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in African diaspora history at New York University and was the NYU Public Humanities Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York. My other projects include a people’s history walking tour of Washington Heights and Uptown NYC, and my family’s history in the borderlands of Sonora and Arizona.
