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.

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/

Office Hours:

Tuesdays, 12:30-2:30 in 213 Languages Building
Education:

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

Comparative Colonial Studies
Global Transnational History
Medieval and Early Modern History
Race and Ethnicity
Latin America and the Caribbean
Global and Comparative
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 • Age of Revolution • Caribbean Region • Contemporary France • French Atlantic • French Caribbean • Haiti • History

Current Ph.D. Students  

Postdocs Mentored

Representative Publications

  1. Dubois, L, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012), Metropolitan Books [9316]  [abs]
  2. Dubois, L, Soccer empire: The World cup and the future of France (June, 2010), University of California Press, ISBN 9780520259287  [abs]
  3. Les Vengeurs du Nouveau Monde: Histoire de la Révolution haïtienne (2006), Editions Les Perseides [index.php]
  4. Dubois, L, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press [html]
  5. 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]
  6. Dubois, L, Les esclaves de la République: l'histoire oubliée de la première émancipation, 1789-1794 (1998), Calmann-Lévy  [abs]
  7. Bender, T; Rabinowitz, R; Dubois, L, Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn (2011), Giles Ltd [available here]
  8. Dubois, L; Scott, JS, Origins of the Black Atlantic (2009), Routledge [product_detail.asp]
  9. Haiti's Traces, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, vol. 39 (November, 2012), pp. 177-187
  10. Dubois, LM, Eloge Pour Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Transition, vol. 109 (Fall, 2012), pp. 21-32
  11. 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]
  12. 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]
  13. Dubois, LM, Reading the Black Jacobins, Seven Decades Later, Nacla Report on the Americas, vol. 42 no. 2 (2009), pp. 38-43 [Reading-Black-Jacobins-7-Decades-Later]
  14. 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
  15. Dubois, LM, Capturing Louverture, Small Axe, vol. 23 (June, 2007), pp. 177-185
  16. 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
  17. Dubois, LM, Histoires d’esclavage en France et aux Etats-Unis, Esprit (February, 2007), pp. 71-80 [details.php]
  18. 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]
  19. 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]
  20. 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]
  21. Dubois, L, La république métissée: Citizenship, colonialism, and the borders of French history, Cultural Studies, vol. 14 no. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 15-34, Informa UK Limited [doi]  [abs]
  22. Dubois, LM, Republican Racism and Anti-Racism: A Caribbean Genealogy, French Politics, Culture and Society, vol. 18 no. 3 (Fall, 2000), pp. 5-17
  23. 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
  24. Dubois, LM, A Spoonful of Blood: Blaming Haitians for AIDS, Science as Culture, vol. 6 no. 26 (Winter, 1997), pp. 7-43
  25. 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
  26. Dubois, L, The French Atlantic, in Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal, edited by Green, JP; Morgan, PD (2009), pp. 137-162, Oxford University Press [available here]
  27. Dubois, L, The Hijab on the Pitch, The Feminist Wire (August, 2012) [available here]
  28. Wolff, A, French World Cup Hero Thuram Working to Battle Racism in Soccer and Society, Sports Illustrated (June, 2012) [html]
  29. 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]
  30. 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]
  31. 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]