Readings

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

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 Code Noir [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). History of Haiti The Other Revolution at John Carter Brown Library The Haiti Collection at John Carter Brown Library First Readings 2010: The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
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)	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) Chomsky's notes on the end of human civilization (PDF) Democracy "enhancement" in Haiti (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).

Required texts

Recommended