Cécile Accilien (U Maryland): “Nout tout se moun! Challenging the Simplistic Narratives around Haiti”

8. Juli 2025, 18-20 c.t., U Bremen & ZOOM

We would like to invite you to a guest lecture by Cécile Accilien (U Maryland) as part of the WOC Research Center Digital Diaspora lecture series. In her talk entitled “Nout tout se moun! Challenging the Simplistic Narratives around Haiti”, Cécile Accilien will explore how these narratives about Haiti emerged from historical and cultural forces, while advocating for more complex perspectives. Drawing on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s idea that “History is the fruit of power,” it will examine how these reductive narratives dehumanize and reinforce racism, greed, classism, and imperialism.

The talk will take place on July 8, 2025, 18:15-19:45 (UTC+2), in room GW2 B3.010 at U Bremen and via Zoom. If you would like to participate online, please write an email to: afroeuropecyberspace@uni-bremen.de

Cécile Accilien is Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Maryland, College Park. She specializes in Francophone African and Caribbean literatures, gender and sexuality studies, and film/media studies. She is affiliated faculty in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the American Studies Department and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center. Her publications include Re-Thinking Marriage in Francophone Africa and Caribbean Literature (2008), Bay Lodyans: Haitian Popular Film Culture (2023), The Antiracism World Language Classroom (2022, co-authored), Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives (co-edited with Valérie Orlando) (2021), and English-Haitian Creole Phrasebook (2010, co-authored). Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Haitian Studies, Women, Gender and Families of Color, Revue française, Southern Quarterly, Diaspora in Caribbean Art, Truthout and Latin American Commentator. She chairs the editorial board for Women, Gender and Families of Color (since 2019) and is the outgoing president of the Haitian Studies Association (2023 & 2024). She is currently working on a biography of singer, manbo and activist Carole Demesmin.