Rasanblaj: The Podcast (Formerly Nèg Mawon. All new episodes at rasanblaj.org exclusively.)

Yes. Haitians were in the nation-building business! This episode covers a little-known chapter in Haitian history. Dr. Regine Jackson offers a fascinating, multi-sited, and interdisciplinary study of the United Nations Organization in the Congo (ONUC), a civilian operation established after the Democratic Republic of Congo achieved independence from Belgium.  

Through narrative interviews in New York City, Port-au-Prince, Montreal ...

• Dr. Steiber turns to the written record to re-examine the building blocks of Haitian history.
• Picking up where most historians conclude, listen as Dr. Chelsea Stieber explores the critical internal challenge to Haiti’s post-independence sovereignty: a civil war between monarchy and republic. What transpired was a war of swords and of pens, waged in newspapers and periodicals, in literature, broadsheets, and fliers. In her an...

I'm thrilled to bring you another episode from our Lakou series, delving into the rich tapestry of Haitian culture living in the diaspora and in Haiti. Today, we have a very special guest joining us all the way from London, Guilaine Brutus, who is an integral part of the Haitian community there.

In this episode, we explored a taboo topic in Haitian culture - the practice of Restavek, and child slavery. I'm not going to sugarcoat...

In this episode of the Nèg Mawon Podcast, we delve deep into the roots of Haiti's complex political landscape with Dr. Robert Fatton. From its foundation, Haiti has grappled with a social, economic, and political apartheid system that has marginalized the majority of its population. Dr. Fatton discusses how this system, rooted in divisions of color, class, and colonial hierarchy, has led to exclusionary practices in education and c...

So, how do scholars get their books published? Notice I didn't say self-published. That's a topic for another day. I mean published via established publishers. That's one of many questions I wanted some answers to. On today's show, we have two guests who will help us understand how the process of book publishing works.

We have the historian and author Dr. Yveline Alexis, Associate Professor of Africana Studies & Comparative A...

Winner, of the Gilbert Chinard Prize, of the Society for French Historical Studies & the Institut Français d'Amérique.

Encountering Revolution looks afresh at the profound impact of the Haitian Revolution on the early United States. The first book on the subject in more than two decades, it redefined our understanding of the relationship between republicanism and slavery at a foundational moment in American history.

For postrev...

Bonjou, and welcome to another riveting episode of the Nèg Mawon Podcast, where we dive deep into the heart of Haitian politics, society, and the continuous struggles that shape our nation. I'm your host, Patrick Jean-Baptiste, and today, you're tuning in to the new series for 2024, 'Yon Zouti Koupe-Ep.#71.'

In this episode, we're grappling with the intense and complex currents ripping through our beloved Haiti. The youth, the beat...

Welcome back to Nèg Mawon Podcast, where we mine the rich history of Haiti and its impact on the world. In today's episode, "Encountering Revolution-part 2," we continue our conversation with the esteemed Dr. Ashli White, a leading expert in early North American history and the history of Haiti and its revolution. We explore the captivating connections between the Haitian revolution and the United States during the 18th century, sh...

Welcome to another enlightening episode of the Nèg Mawon Podcast, your go-to platform for in-depth discussions that unearth the complexities of Haitian history, culture, and contemporary challenges. I'm your host, Patrick Jean-Baptiste, and today we're diving deep into a topic that is fundamental to understanding Haiti's present by exploring its past.

This episode is about the Haitian people, not their early leaders, some of whom ...

We're joined today by the esteemed Dr. Greg Beckett, a cultural anthropologist with deep insights into Haitian studies.

In today's conversation, we will unpack the complexities outlined in Michel-Rolph Trouillot's pivotal book “Haiti: State Against Nation. The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism” and connect its themes to the ongoing political turmoil in Haiti.

Dr. Beckett will guide us through the importance of anthropology's tool...

1. Did you know that... Dr. Marlene Daut was initially urged to avoid publishing her work about the literature of the Haitian Revolution due to market concerns?

2. Did you know that... institutional biases often impede authors from diverse backgrounds in the publishing world?

3. Did you know that... Dr. Daut prioritizes publishing in spaces that allow for true expression over merely prestigious places?

4. Did you know that... Dr. D...

In this episode, Dr. Popkin discusses his riveting book "Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection."

We discussed the underdeveloped state of French scholarship on the Haitian Revolution, the controversial accounts of white colonial survivors, and the critical role of literacy and correspondence in maintaining the slave regime.

The Haitian revolution represented the scales of power tipping in an ...

This conversation with Dr. Sophie Maríñez is less an interview than a reckoning for me, an excavation of Haitian and Dominican ghosts, of histories silenced and distorted, the way the past never quite stays in the past–“The past is never dead. It’s not even past”. She walks us through the troubled narratives of Haiti and the Dominican Republic—not as distant, separate nations, but as entangled siblings, bound by history, betrayal, ...

Like my guest today, I’ve never found it particularly useful to cast François Duvalier as some frothing, otherworldly monster. That story is too easy. It offers too little. Once you wrap him in the veil of pathology, the conversation dies. You’ve exiled him to a place beyond history, beyond explanation, beyond us. But what haunts me still—what lives in the marrow of Belleau’s work—is not the spectacle of evil, but its intimacy. The...