WEEKLY TOPICS FOR HAIITAN HISTORY COURSE

This is my tentative plan. I am sure that along the way some changes may have to be made. I will update it as needed. However, at the moment, this is THE plan that I intend to follow.

Last updated: August 17, 1999

Week 1:

  1. How the course will work, and what the plan is.
  2. General comments on history and Haiti and this historical approach.
    1. Dialectic of the past and present. History as the creation and genesis of the present.
    2. Trouillot's "silences" in history.
  3. Initial brief overview of Haitian history.

Week 2:

  1. Basic data and geography.
  2. Third, fourth and fifth world status.
  3. Maps. Haiti and Hispaniola.

Week 3:

  1. The pre-Columbian period.
    1. Basic life of the Taino-Arawak before Columbus.
    2. The early interactions of the Spanish and Indians.
    3. Hispaniola and the question of genocide.
    4. Traces of the Hispaniola Taino-Arawak.
  2. Spanish rule of Hispaniola.
  3. Pirates, Hispaniola and the coming French period.

Week 4:

  1. The early French colony.
  2. Slavery , sugar, coffee, affranchais and maroons.
  3. The French Revolution and St. Domingue.

Week 5: The Haitian Revolution.

Week 6: From Independence to U.S. Occupation

  1. Early struggles of freedom and recovery.
    1. Attempts to continue the French system.
    2. Petion and Boyer's life and let live system.
    3. The two Haitis.
  2. The international community
    1. The French debt.
    2. The U.S. and threat of rebelled slaves.
    3. International boycott.
  3. The Revolving presidents and foreign financial support for revolutions.

Week 7: The U.S. Occupation and transition to U.S. hegemony.

Week 8: First research papers to be posted and discussed.

Week 9: Negritude, literature and cacos de plume. The ground work for Duvalierism.

Week 10: Haitian art from the 1940s to present.

Week 11: Haitian Voodoo religion.

Week 12: The Duvalier years.

Week 13: Aristide and the struggle for structural change to the present.

Week 14: Haitian misery.

  1. Hunger.
  2. Health care.
  3. Population.
  4. Social services.
  5. Class and color.

Week 15: Strategies for alleviation.

  1. Missionaries and humanitarians.
  2. Foreign aid.
  3. Internal structural improvement: the political future

Week 16: Second research paper set posted and discussed.

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Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu