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About Me

Professor Daut teaches courses in anglophone and francophone Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. Primarily a literary and intellectual historian of the Caribbean, she writes about the history of the Haitian Revolution, literary cultures of the greater Caribbean, and racial politics in global media, especially as appears in film and television.

Her books include Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism(link is external) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (link is external)(Liverpool University Press, 2015). She is also co-editor (with Grégory Pierrot and Marion Rohrleitner) of the volume, Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology (link is external)(UVA Press 2022). Her next book, an intellectual history of Haiti titled Awakening the Ashes, is forthcoming with the University of North Carolina Press in fall 2023. Professor Daut is currently writing a narrative history of the kingdom of Haiti and biography of King Henry Christophe (under contract with Knopf/Pantheon).

Professor Daut’s articles have appeared in The New York Times; The Nation; Essence Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar; Avidly: A Channel of the LA Review of Books; The Conversation; and Public Books, among others. Her peer-reviewed articles can be found in journals such as, New Literary History, archipelagos, Small Axe, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Comparative Literature, Studies in Romanticism, and more.

Daut is also the co-creator and co-editor of H-Net Commons’ digital platform, H-Haiti(link is external) with Julia Gaffield and curates a website on early Haitian print culture at http://lagazetteroyale.com(link is external). She has also developed an online bibliography of fictions of the Haitian Revolution from 1787 to 1900 at the website http://haitianrevolutionaryfictions.com(link is external) and co-edits the Global Black History and Theory(link is external) section at Public Books with Tao Leigh Goffe. She is also series editor of New World Studies(link is external) at UVA Press.

Recent Publications

“What the French Really Owe Haiti.” The Nation. June 13, 2022. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/haiti-france-reparations-slavery/

“Let’s Set the History Record Straight. We Can’t Excuse Racists Like Thomas Jefferson as Just Being ‘Men Of Their Time’.” Essence Magazine. February 29, 2022

https://www.essence.com/holidays/black-history-month/black-history-month-thomas-jefferson/

“Resurrecting a Lost Palace of Haiti.” Harper’s Bazaar. 8 October 2021. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a37896377/resurrecting-a-lost-palace-of-haiti/

“Haiti Isn’t Cursed, It is Exploited.” Essence Magazine. November/December 2021 issue. https://www.essence.com/news/haiti-isnt-cursed-it-is-exploited/

“France Pulled Off One of the Greatest Heists Ever. It Left Haiti Perpetually Impoverished.” Miami Herald. 15 July 2021. (Originally published in The Conversation) https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article252809873.html

“Four Haitian Novels that Beautifully Blend History, Memory, and Reality.” The Conversation 26 July 2021 https://theconversation.com/4-haitian-novels-that-beautifully-blend-history-memory-and-reality-164277

“Napoléon isn’t a Hero to Celebrate.” New York Times. 18 March 2021.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/france-year-of-napoleon.html

“Why did Bridgerton Erase Haiti?” Avidly, a channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. 19 January 2021 https://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2021/01/19/why-did-bridgerton-erase-haiti/

“All the Devils are Here: How the visual history of the Haitian Revolution misrepresents Black suffering and death.” Lapham’s Quarterly. 14 October 2020. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/all-devils-are-here

“The King of Haiti’s Dream.” Aeon Magazine. 14 July  2020. https://aeon.co/essays/the-king-of-haiti-and-the-dilemmas-of-freedom-in-a-colonised-world

“When France Extorted Haiti.” The Conversation. 30 July 2020. https://theconversation.com/when-france-extorted-haiti-the-greatest-heist-in-history-137949

Media Coverage

NPR: "What the Haitian Revolution Tells us About the U.S. Movement for Racial Equality:' https://www.npr.org/2021/07/04/1012978325/what-the-haitian-revolution-tells-us-about-the-u-s-movement-for-racial-equality

Social Media

Country Focus

Haiti, the United States, France

Expertise by Geography

Atlantic, Caribbean, France, United States

Expertise by Chronology

17th century, 18th century, 19th century

Expertise by Topic

American Civil War, American Revolution, American Founding Era, Colonialism, Genocide, Literary History, Material Culture, Public History, Race, Rebellion & Revolution, Slavery