Past Program/Event

The January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti struck a country already suffering from widespread poverty and underdevelopment. What does it mean to rebuild Haiti? How does the recent mantra of constructing a “new Haiti” fit in the republic’s historical context? How are these contemporary sayings and blue prints embedded with ideas of development that are in constant tension with the values and logic systems of the indigenous peoples? This event explored these and other questions regarding Haiti’s post-earthquake reality with Dr. Millery Polyné.

Millery Polyné, PhD is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of American Studies at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. A graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Michigan, Dr. Polyné’s teaching and research interests highlight the history of African American and Afro-Caribbean cultural, political, and economic initiatives in the 19th and 20th centuries; dance, jazz, sports and urban memory. He has published in journals such as Caribbean Studies, Journal of Haitian Studies, Wadabagei and The Black Scholar. He is the author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism 1870-1964. Currently, he is working on two books, one a study of the interconnections between Caribbean exiles, the politics of human rights activism and organization, and democratic systems within inter-American affairs during the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Polyné’s interests also focus on film and poetry. He directed “The Hip-Hop Paradigm” and was a cameraman on the film Rhythms from Africa: An Ocean of Melodies, which won the Golden Dhow Best Documentary Video Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. His next documentary, Papa Doc, which examines the life, origins and impact of François Duvalier’s dictatorship on Haitian society, is currently in preproduction. A 2003 recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, Dr. Polyné authored Release: Race Love Jazz, his first book of poetry. For more on Dr. Polyné’s accomplishments, VISIT HIS WEBSITE