Classics in Haiti, with Tom Hawkins

Abstract

When Haiti declared its independence from France on 1 January 1804, it began the process of fostering a national culture. One element of this cultural development can be seen at the intersection of Haitian literature with the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome. In this episode, Shivaike Shah talks with Tom Hawkins, Associate Professor of Classics at Ohio State University, about the ways in which Haitian authors have sought ‘to take back Classics from the colonial archive’ (Emily Greenwood) in texts ranging from the earliest years of the new nation to the contemporary Haitian diaspora.

Bibliography

Open-source

For an introduction to Haitian history, the Revolutions Podcast has a series on the Haitian Revolution here.

Paywalled

E. Bergeaud, Stella: A Novel of the Haitian Revolution (1853) (New York: New York University Press, 2015)

Moira Fradinger, ‘Danbala's Daughter: Félix Morisseau‐Leroy's Antigòn an Kreyòl’, in Erin B. Mee & Helene P. Foley (eds.), Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 127–46

E. Greenwood, Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the 20th century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Jeremy D. Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011)

Transcript

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.