LASA: Haiti-DR Section pre-conference event, part 1: York College
Kiran
As you know, this year is the fiftieth year of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), which will hold the 2016 meetings in New York City. The Haiti-Dominican Republic Section of LASA is organizing several events this year, including an entire day of activities occurring before the Conference begins. The Haiti-Dominican Republic Section has organized a pre-LASA event entitled “Expert Witnessing on Haiti and the Dominican Republic.” This will be held at York College (CUNY) in Jamaica, Queens, on May 26, 2016. The event will last from noon-3pm. We invite you to join other Haitianist and Dominicanist colleagues who will be presenting their ideas and meeting with students, colleagues, and community members.
Expert witnessing involves people telling what they know about a stressful topic (witnessing) based upon their (expert) knowledge. It involves legality, morality, subjectivity, and competence. This event continues the scholarly, activist, artistic, and community-based responses to a 2013 Constitutional Court decision in the Dominican Republic that placed issues of citizenship and migrant rights at the forefront of political debates in the country, across the island, and around the world. Experts will present five-minute lectures on topics related to Haitian-Dominican relations, broadly understood. We also will invite the public, as experts on their experiences, to give testimonials about how the decision affects them. The entire event will be video recorded and archived as a public record and teaching tool.
Please let us know if you will be able to attend. Following the afternoon activities, a second event will be held at the Dominican Studies Institute in the evening. We hope you can join us for this, as well.
We look forward to hearing from you, and we hope you can participate in all the Section is organizing for this year’s meetings.
Assistant Professor, York College (CUNY)