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) |
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.
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) | John Tirman. “On Immigration and Terrorism” Election Insights, 2016. | 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 |
“An Immigration Debate in Eighteenth-Century America,” Common-Place 9, no. 3 April 2009. “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). |
Harrell, D. Fox. Chapter 8 in Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression. MIT Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780262019330.
