A conversation between Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African American Studies at Yale University and author of Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) and Laurent Dubois, John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor in the History & Principles of Democracy and Professor of History, Academic Director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy, and Director, John L. Nau III History & Principles of Democracy Lab, University of Virginia, from June 3, 2024.
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About the Book
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the first antislavery and anticolonial uprising led by New World Africans to result in the creation of an independent and slavery-free nation-state. Unsurprisingly, the momentousness of Haiti’s 13-year-long revolution for freedom and equality has a long intellectual history. Beginning with indigenous resistance to Spanish colonial rule on Ayiti (present-day Haiti) in the 16th century and ending around the turn of the 20th century, Awakening the Ashes provides an in-depth study of key figures of Haitian intellectual history and a broad analysis of the central political, literary, and historical ideas Haitian thinkers developed in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. This study of the interconnectedness of Haitian intellectuals with their counterparts from around the world highlights the largely unacknowledged role of Haitian thinkers in transforming our understanding of several concepts essential to the creation of the modern world-system: colonialism and race, slavery and abolition, freedom and sovereignty.
About Marlene L. Daut
Marlene L. Daut is an author, scholar, editor, and professor. Her books include Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World; Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism; and Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution. Her articles on Haitian history and culture have appeared in over a dozen magazines, newspapers, and journals including, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Essence, The Nation, and the LA Review of Books. She has won several awards, grants, and fellowships for her contributions to historical and cultural understandings of the Caribbean, notably from the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Haitian Studies Association, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most recently, she won a grant from the Robert Silvers Foundation for her forthcoming biography, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, January 2025). Daut has taught Haitian and French colonial history and culture at the University of Miami, the Claremont Graduate University, and the University of Virginia, where she also became series editor of New World Studies at UVA Press. In July 2022, she was appointed as Professor of French and African American Studies at Yale University.
About Laurent Dubois
Laurent Dubois is John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor of the History & Principles of Democracy and the academic director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia. From 2007 to 2020, he was professor of romance studies and history at Duke University, where he founded and directed the Forum for Scholars & Publics. He is the author of eight books, including Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004), A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (2004), Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012), and The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer (2018). His writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is currently writing a history of France and the Americas, under contract with Basic Books, titled "Seven Rivers & a Sea."