Guest speaker to discuss Haiti since the 2010 earthquake
The trials and endurance of the Haitian people since a devastating earthquake hit in 2010 will be the focus of a guest lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point on Tuesday, Dec. 6.
Kevin Meehan, a professor of English and founding director of the Haitian Studies Project at the University of Central Florida, will give the presentation “Mountains Behind Mountains: Popular Movements and the Long Struggle for Haitian Sovereignty” at 7 p.m. in the Laird Room North (Room 230) of the Dreyfus University Center. The talk is free and open to the public.
The presentation’s title refers to the Kreyol (Creole) proverb, ““Deye mon, gen mon,” which can be translated as “behind the mountain, more mountains.” While often interpreted as a metaphor for the seemingly endless stream of problems faced by Haiti during two centuries of independence, or alternatively as an expression of the steadfast endurance of Haitian people in confronting those problems, Meehan takes it here as a figure for the omnipresence of popular organizations and their important role as a force for social inclusion.
His talk will offer some historical perspective on popular movements but will focus in more detail on the period since the devastating 2010 earthquake. Based on 20 years of fieldwork in Haiti as well as National Science Foundation-funded research in the past year, Meehan will trace connections between peasant associations and higher education developments that reveal real efforts by Haitian people to control their destiny in spite of the political, economic and environmental forces ranged against them.
For more information, contact Anju Reejhsinghani, assistant professor of history and chair of the Latin American/Caribbean Speaker Series at UW-Stevens Point, 715-346-4122 or areejhsi@uwsp.edu.
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