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Laurent Dubois, Professor of Romance Studies and History

Laurent Dubois

I am a specialist on the history and culture of the Atlantic world, with a focus on the Caribbean and particularly Haiti. I am the faculty director of the Forum for Scholars and Publics at Duke University, and write for magazines including the New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and the New Yorker. I recently completed a book entitled The Banjo: America's African instrument, which is forthcoming with Harvard University Press in the Spring of 2016. I have received a Mellon New Directions Fellowship, a National Humanities Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship to support this work. My most recent book Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (Metropolitan Books, 2012) tells the history of the country from it's founding revolution to the present day. In 2010 I published Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France, and continue to write about soccer at my blog Soccer Politics. In 2004 I published Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Harvard) as well as A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Published by UNC Press for the Omohundro Institute), which won four book prizes including the Frederick Douglass Prize. I have also co-edited a collection of documents on the Haitian Revolution with John Garrigus, a reader entitled Origins of the Black Atlantic with Julius Scott and, with Thomas Bender and Richard Rabinowitz, the catalogue for the exhibit Revolution!: The Atlantic World Reborn, for which I was co-chair of the scholar's committee. I am also co-editing the "Haiti Reader" for Duke University Press. I advise graduate students in both History and Romance Studies, working on a range of topics in Caribbean and French colonial and post-colonial studies.

Contact Info:
Office Location:  213 Language Center, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:  (919) 660-3112
Email Address: send me a message
Web Page:  http://duboisl2.wordpress.com/

Education:

Ph.D.University of Michigan, Ann Arbor1998
B.A.Princeton University1992
Specialties:

French
Caribbean Studies
Modern and Contemporary
Decolonial and Post-colonial Studies
Globalization, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity
Historicism
The Enlightenment in a Global Perspective
Research Interests: Anthropology, History and Literature of the French Caribbean and the Atlantic World

I am a specialist on the history and culture of the Atlantic world, with a focus on the Caribbean and particularly Haiti. I am the faculty director of the Forum for Scholars and Publics at Duke University, and write for magazines including the New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and the New Yorker. My current research and writing focuses on the Afro-Atlantic history of the banjo. I am completing a book (under contract with Harvard University Press) on the topic. I have received a Mellon New Directions Fellowship, a National Humanities Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship to support this work. My most recent book Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012) tells the history of the country from it's founding revolution to the present day. In 2010 I published Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France, and continue to write about soccer at my blog Soccer Politics. I have also recently co-edited, with Julius Scott, a reader entitled Origins of the Black Atlantic and, with Thomas Bender and Richard Rabinowitz, the catalogue for the exhibit Revolution!: The Atlantic World Reborn, for which I was co-chair of the scholar's committee. I am also co-editing the "Haiti Reader" for Duke University Press. I advise graduate students in both History and Romance Studies, working on a range of topics in Caribbean and French colonial and post-colonial studies.

Areas of Interest:

Caribbean
French Atlantic
Contemporary France
Afro-Atlantic Music and Religion

Keywords:

African diaspora • Caribbean Region • History

Duties:

Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History Director, Center for French and Francophone Studies Co-Director, Haiti Laboratory, Franklin Humanities Institute
Curriculum Vitae
Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

  • Michael Becker  
  • Claire A. Payton  
  • Eliza Dandridge  
  • Joaquin Bueno  
  • Reginald Patterson  
Postdocs Mentored

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Haiti's Traces, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, vol. 39 (November, 2012), pp. 177-187
  2. Dubois, L, The Hijab on the Pitch, The Feminist Wire (August, 2012) [available here]
  3. Dubois, L, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012), Metropolitan Books [9316]  [abs]
  4. Bender, T; Rabinowitz, R; Dubois, L, Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn (2011), Giles Ltd [available here]
  5. Casimir, J; Dubois, LM, Reckoning in Haiti, in Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture, and the Earthquake of 2010, edited by Munro, M (2010), University of West Indies Press
  6. Dubois, L, Egalite for All: Human Rights and the Haitian Revolution (2008) (I was the head historical consultant for Koval Films on a documentary on the Haitian Revolution, aired on PBS in January 2009..) [html]
  7. Bell, MS, The Haitian Revolution at the Crossroads: A Discussion Between Madison Smartt Bell and Laurent Dubois, Common Place.Org, vol. 7 no. 4 (July, 2007) [available here]
  8. Dubois, LM, Eloge Pour Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Transition, vol. 109 (Fall, 2012), pp. 21-32
  9. Wolff, A, French World Cup Hero Thuram Working to Battle Racism in Soccer and Society, Sports Illustrated (June, 2012) [html]
  10. Dubois, L, Soccer empire: The World cup and the future of France (June, 2010), University of California Press, ISBN 9780520259287  [abs]
  11. Dubois, L; Scott, JS, Origins of the Black Atlantic (2009), Routledge [product_detail.asp]
  12. With Michel Giraud, Marc-Olivier Padis, and Patrick Weil, “Une histoire à transmettre,” interview with Lilian Thuram,, Esprit (February, 2007), pp. 117-123 [details.php]
  13. Dubois, LM, Dessalines Toro d'Haiti, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 69 no. 3 (July, 2012), pp. 541-548, ISSN 0043-5597 [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
  14. Founding Editor, Soccer Politics Blog (to Present) [wcwp]
  15. Dubois, L, Thinking with Haiti, Ayiti Kraze/Haiti in Fragments, Social Text: Periscope (January, 2010) [available here]
  16. Les Vengeurs du Nouveau Monde: Histoire de la Révolution haïtienne (2006), Editions Les Perseides [index.php]
  17. Dubois, L, An atlantic revolution, French Historical Studies, vol. 32 no. 4 (Fall, 2009), pp. 655-661, Duke University Press, ISSN 0016-1071 [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
  18. Dubois, L, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press [html]
  19. Dubois, L, A colony of citizens: Revolution and slave emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (January, 2012), pp. 1-452, Published for the Omohundro Institute by the University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 0807828742 [html]  [abs]
  20. Dubois, LM; Camier, B, Voltaire, Zaïre, Dessalines: Le Théâtre des Lumières dans L’Atlantique français, Revue D'Histoire Moderne Et Contemporaine, vol. 54 no. 4 (December, 2007), pp. 39-69
  21. Dubois, LM, Capturing Louverture, Small Axe, vol. 23 (June, 2007), pp. 177-185
  22. Dubois, L, Les esclaves de la République: l'histoire oubliée de la première émancipation, 1789-1794 (1998), Calmann-Lévy  [abs]
  23. Dubois, LM, The Haitian Revolution and the Sale of Louisiana, The Southern Quarterly: a Journal of Arts in the South, vol. 44 no. 3 (Spring, 2007), pp. 18-41
  24. Dubois, LM, Histoires d’esclavage en France et aux Etats-Unis, Esprit (February, 2007), pp. 71-80 [details.php]
  25. Dubois, LM; Josué, E, Le Vodou, Miroir de l’histoire: Dialogue, Tabou: Revue Du Musée D’Ethnologie De Genève, vol. 5 (2007), pp. 325-340 [edition.php]
  26. Dubois, L, An enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the intellectual history of the French Atlantic, Social History, vol. 31 no. 1 (February, 2006), pp. 1-14, Informa UK Limited [doi]
  27. Dubois, LM, ’Citoyens et Amis!’ Esclavage, citoyenneté et République dans les Antilles françaises à l’époque révolutionnaire, vol. 58 no. 2 (March, 2003), pp. 281-304 [htm]
  28. Dubois, LM, Republican Racism and Anti-Racism: A Caribbean Genealogy, French Politics, Culture and Society, vol. 18 no. 3 (Fall, 2000), pp. 5-17
  29. Dubois, LM, Republic At Sea: On the Margins of the New Europe, Transition, vol. 79 (June, 1999), pp. 64-79
  30. Dubois, LM, ‘The Price of Liberty’: Victor Hugues and the Administration of Freedom in Guadeloupe, 1794-1802, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. Quarterly 3rd series, LVI no. 2 (April, 1999), pp. 363-392
  31. Dubois, LM, A Spoonful of Blood: Blaming Haitians for AIDS, Science as Culture, vol. 6 no. 26 (Winter, 1997), pp. 7-43
Conferences Organized

  • Chair, Programming Committee : Africans in the Americas: Making Lives in a New World, 1675-1825. January 2012 - March 2013, Chair, Programming Committee : Africans in the Americas: Making Lives in a New World, 1675-1825, January, 2012 - March, 2013  
  • The Common Wind Conference. November 2008, The Common Wind Conference, November, 2008  

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