Required texts
[Dubois] = Dubois, Laurent. Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. Macmillan, 2012. ISBN: 9781250002365
[Melville] = Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. Edited by Wyn Kelley. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780312452421
[Danticat] = Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones: A Novel. Vol. 3. Soho Press, 1998. ISBN: 9781616953492
[Morrison] = Morrison, Tony. The Bluest Eye. Vintage Books, 2007. ISBN: 9780307278449
Recommended
Devonish, Hubert. Language and Liberation: Creole Language Politics in the Caribbean. Arwack Press, 2007.
Roberts, Peter A. Roots of Caribbean Identity. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
| session | reading | supplemental Material |
|---|---|---|
| 1: Why “Black Matters”? What’s “Black” and why does “Black” matter? And why do “Black languages” matter? | No readings |
Louise Bennett video: Miss Lou (Part 3) JAMAICA LANGUAGE “Discourse on Language” by M. Nourbese Philip from She Tries Her Tongue Language Prejudice: Are you being judged by the way you speak? By Wendy Wei |
| 2: What’s linguistics? Language: A proxy for race and identity? |
Anderson, Stephen R. Doctor Dolittle’s Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Human Language. Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 15–37. ISBN: 9780300115253. Lippi-Green, Rosina. English With an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. Psychology Press, 2012, pp. v–26. ISBN: 9780415559119. Grubbs, Donald H., and Howard Brotz. “Negro Social and Political Thought, 1850-1920.” (1967). pp. 226–244. |
No supplemental material |
| 3: Race (and class) in the study of language evolution in the U.S. |
Finegan, Edward, and John R. Rickford. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 76–91. ISBN: 9780521777476. Mufwene, Salikoko S. Language Evolution: Contact, Competition and Change. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008, pp. 93–112. ISBN: 9780826493705. Alim, H. Samy, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball, eds. Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes our Ideas About Race. Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780190625696 Makoni, Sinfree. Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas. Psychology Press, 2003, pp 155–168. ISBN: 9780415261388. Ferguson, Charles Albert, Edward Finegan, Shirley Brice Heath, and John R. Rickford, eds. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp 76–91. ISBN: 9780521777476. |
Public service announcement videos about linguistic profiling |
| 4: Black Lives Matter. And Black Languages Matter |
Baldwin, James. “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” The Black Scholar 27, no. 1 (1997): 5–6. Rickford, John R., and Sharese King. “Language and Linguistics on Trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (And Other Vernacular Speakers) in the Courtroom and Beyond.” Language 92, no. 4 (2016): 948–988. Bolotnikova, Marina: “Rachel Jeantel’s Language Is English — It’s Just Not Your English.” 2017. Accessed June 7, 2017. |
John Rickford’s Stanford Open Office Hours on the Trayvon Martin trial and the impact of linguistic prejudice on social justice |
| 5: Are we what we speak? Relating language to issues of identity, (self-)identification, (mis-)identification, etc. in the U.S. |
Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. Psychology Press, 2012, pp. 44–77 and Chapter 7. ISBN: 9780415559119. Alim, H. Samy, and Geneva Smitherman. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the US. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 1–30. ISBN: 9780199812981. |
Film: American Tongues: A film about the way we talk (New York: Center for New American Media, 1987) Why a Bible in Jamaican Creole (“Patois”)? Linguist challenges Prime Minister about Patois Bible “No logic in teaching Patois in schools…” |
| 6: Guest lecture/workshop: Professor Helen Elaine Lee (MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Director of Women’s and Gender Studies) | [Morrison] | No supplemental material |
| 7: Guest lecture: Professor Fox Harrell (Digital Media, Comparative Media Studies, Writing) |
Harrell, D. Fox. Chapter 8 in Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression. MIT Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780262019330. Delany, Samuel R. “The Tale of Gorgik” in Tales of Nevèrÿon. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2014. |
No supplemental material |
| 8: Why Haiti matters? As an example of unthinkable (r)evolution where the “Black Lives Matter” movement started—avant la lettre |
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen [Dubios] “Introduction” and “Independence” in Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, pp. 1–51. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and Production of History. Beacon Press, 1995, Chapter 3, pp. 70–107. ISBN: 9781494569693. Optional: Jenson, Deborah. “Dessalines’s American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence.” Journal of Haitian Studies (2009): 72–102. |
PBS Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution (2009). The Other Revolution at John Carter Brown Library The Haiti Collection at John Carter Brown Library |
| 9: Guest lecture: Professor Malick Ghachem (MIT History). Thinking through the “unthinkable”: The Haitian Revolution among the great revolutions of the Atlantic world of the 18th century |
James, C. L. R. “Lectures on The Black Jacobins.” Small Axe 8, no. 110 (2000): 15. Baker, Keith Michael, and Dan Edelstein, eds. “The Antislavery Script.” In Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions. Stanford University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780804796163. |
No supplemental material |
| 10: Guest lecture: Professor Wyn Kelly (Literature) The “unthinkable” in Melville’s Benito Cereno (part 1) | [Melville] pp. 35–107 | No supplemental material |
| 11: Guest lecture: Professor Wyn Kelly (Literature) The “unthinkable” in Melville’s Benito Cereno (part 2) |
Grandin, Greg. The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World. Metropolitan Books, 2014, pp. 171–181, 186–196, 197–199, 265–273. ISBN: 9781250062109. [Melville] pp. 109–141 Beecher, Jonathan. “Echoes of Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution in Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno.’” Leviathan 9.2 (June 2007): 43–58 |
No supplemental material |
| 12: Guest lecture: Professor Wyn Kelley (MIT Literature) |
[Melville] pp. 1–32 Douglass, Frederick. “The Heroic Slave in Autographs for Freedom.” Edited by Julia Griffiths. 1853: 174–239. |
No supplemental material |
|
13: Guest: Vodou Priestess Marie Maude Evans The other “unthinkable”: Vodou as religion |
Pilkey, Dav. 2001. Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot vs. the Voodoo Vultures from Venus: Giant Robot Vs. The Voodoo Vultures From Venus. New York: Blue Sky Press. ISBN: 9780439236249. Mintz, Sidney, Michel-Rolph Trouillot. “Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou (PDF - 6.6MB).” 1995. pp. 123–147. Hawley, John Stratton. Saints and Virtues. Vol. 2. University of California Press, 1987. pp. 144–167. |
No supplemental material |
| 14: Guest lecture: Professor Erica Caple James (MIT Anthropology) Political Economy of trauma in Haiti and the politics of asylum |
James, Erica Caple. “Ruptures, Rights, and Repair: The Political Economy of Trauma in Haiti.” Social Science & Medicine 70, no. 1 (2010): 106-113. James, Erica Caple. “Haiti, Insecurity, and the Politics of Asylum.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2011): 357-376. Das, Veena, and Clara Han. “If You Remember, You Can’t Live.” Chapter 16 in Living and Dying in the Contemporary World: A Compendium. University of California Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780520278417. |
No supplemental material |
|
15: Guest lecture: Professor Sandy Alexandre (MIT Literature) Building monuments with language: Translating the oral into the literary in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones |
Kurlansky, Mark, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Díaz. “In the Dominican Republic, Suddenly Stateless.” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 10, 2013. Dove, Rita. “Parsley.” Poetry Foundation (1983). [Danticat] |
Haiti and the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided |
| 16: Guest lecture: Professor John Tirman (MIT International Studies) Immigration, Politics and Elections (part 1) |
Peter Dizikes. “Culture Clash” MIT News, May 3, 2015. Cristina Rodriguez: “Immigration, Civil Rights and the Formation of the People,” Daedalus 142, no. 3 (2013): 228–241. Nicholas de Genova: “The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality’ (PDF),” Latino Studies 2 (2004): 160–185. Tirman, John. Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash. MIT Press, 2015. pp. 25–60. Leitner, Helga. “Spaces of Encounters: Immigration, Race, Class, and the Politics of Belonging in Small-Town America.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102, no. 4 (2012): 828–846. Breen, Michael J., Eoin Devereux, and Amanda Haynes. “Fear, Framing and Foreigners: The Othering of Immigrants in the Irish Print Media.” (2006). |
No supplemental material |
| 17: Guest lecture: Professor John Tirman (MIT International Studies) Immigration, Politics and Elections (part 2) | No readings | No supplemental material |
| 18: Guest lecture: Professor Vivek Bald (MIT Comparative Media Studies) The lost histories of South Asians in America | Bald, Vivek. Chapters 1 and 2 in Bengali Harlem and the Lost History of South Asian America. Harvard University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780674503854. | The hidden history of Bengali Harlem |
| 19: Dr. Nora Jackson: Workshop on critical argumentation and working with sources | No readings | No supplemental material |
| 20: Guest lecture: Professor Vince Brown (Harvard History) An immigration debate in 18th century America | “Essay concerning Slavery and the Danger JAMAICA Is expos’d to from the Too great Number of Slaves and the too little Care that is taken to manage Them, and a Proposal to prevent the further Importation of Negroes into that Is.” London: Charles Corbett, 1746, pp. 31–32. | No supplemental material |
| 21: Guest lecture/workshop: Professor Helen Elaine Lee (MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, Director of Women’s and Gender Studies) | No readings | No supplemental material |
| 22: Politics of language and (mis)education in the U.S. and the Caribbean |
Finegan & Rickford, eds., Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 305–318. ISBN: 9780521777476. Roberts, Peter A. From Oral to Literate Culture: Colonial Experience in the English West Indies. Kingston, Jamaica: Press University of the West Indies, 1997. pp 236–278. DeGraff, Michel. “Linguists’ Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism.” Language in Society (2005): 533–591. Optional: Devonish, Hubert. Language and Liberation: Creole Language Politics in the Caribbean. Red Sea Press, 1986. pp. 1–16, 38–117. |
No supplemental material |
| 23: Guest lecture/workshop: Dr. Lourdes Aleman (MIT Office of Digital Learning) Identity, mindset and the psychology of change (part 1) |
Inzlicht, Michael, Catherine Good, S. Levin, and C. van Laar. “How Environments Can Threaten Academic Performance, Self-Knowledge, and Sense of Belonging (PDF).” In Stigma and Group Inequality: Social Psychological Perspectives. Erlbaum and Associates, 2006, pp. 129–150. Walton, Gregory M. “The Myth of Intelligence: Smartness Isn’t Like Height.” Education, Justice, and Democracy (2013): 155–72. |
No supplemental material |
| 24: Guest lecture/workshop: Dr. Lourdes Aleman (MIT Office of Digital Learning) Identity, mindset and the psychology of change (part 2) |
“7 Things Growth Mindset Is Not.” Turnaround for Children. 2016. Dweck, Carol S. “Mindsets and Human Nature: Promoting Change in the Middle East, the Schoolyard, the Racial Divide, and Willpower.” American Psychologist 67, no. 8 (2012): 614. Optional: Carr, Priyanka B., Aneeta Rattan, and Carol S. Dweck. “3 Implicit Theories Shape Intergroup Relations (PDF).” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2012): 127. |
No supplemental material |
| 25: Guest lecture: Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT Linguistics) | No readings |
Chart on infant black mortality (PDF) Chomsky’s notes on neo-liberalism (PDF) |
| 26: Language, resistance and liberation — communities of the future? |
Freire, Paulo, and Donaldo Macedo. Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Routledge, 2005, pp. 32–41, 98–110. ISBN: 9780897891264. “Haiti’s ‘Linguistic Apartheid’ Violates Children’s Rights and Hampers Development.” 2017. openDemocracy. Accessed January 30 2017. |
Michel DeGraff and Kendy Verilus: “MIT-Haiti Initiative: Opening up education in Haiti.” 2015 NSF Video Showcase. Miller, Haynes. “The MIT-Haiti Initiative: An International Engagement.” MIT Faculty Newsletter 24, no. 1 (September/October 2016). |
