Collins Memorial Library: FREN 480: French in the Americas: Advice

Your assignment asks you to research a period of Haiti's history to lay the foundation for three Haitian novels you will read this semester. The resources on this guide will help you identify important people, events and political ideas of the period you've selected and locate relevant sources for your presentation.

Advice from Your Liaison Librarian

Pro Tips:

Contact a librarian whenever questions arise. Quick questions can be answered via email; more in-depth questions can be handled best with an appointment.
Work on your project consistently each and every week, so that materials have time to arrive from other libraries and we can answer your questions when you still have sufficient time to thoughtfully revise your work.
Seek out a variety of sources: books, essays in books, journal articles.
Use a variety of search tools: Primo, multiple databases, sometimes even Google Scholar. If your topic is interdisciplinary, take a look at related subject guides to find broader research tools.
Keep careful notes on all of your sources and use a citation management tool such as RefWorks or Zotero. If an online knowledge management tool is not for you, make sure that any system that you do use is thorough.

Featured Resources

The Haiti Reader by Laurent Dubois (Editor); Kaiama L. Glover (Editor); Nadève Ménard (Editor); Millery Polyné (Editor); Chantalle F. Verna (Editor)
Call Number: Click on the title above for online access
ISBN: 9781478005162
Publication Date: 2020
Introduces readers to Haiti's dynamic history and culture from the viewpoint of Haitians from all walks of life. It's dozens of selections are representative of Haiti's scholarly, literary, religious, visual, musical, and political cultures, and range from poems, novels, and political tracts to essays, legislation, songs, and folk tales.
Haitian History: New Perspectives by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (Editor)
Call Number: Click on the title above for online access
ISBN: 0415808685
Publication Date: 2012
Presents the best of the recent articles on Haitian history, by both Haitian and foreign scholars, moving from colonial Saint Domingue to the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.
The Haitians: a decolonial history by Jean Casimir; Laurent Dubois (Translator)
Call Number: F1921 .C267 2020 Print Books
ISBN: 9781469651545
Publication Date: 2020
In this sweeping history, leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth century.

Online Resources

Digital Library of the Caribbean
A cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. Do a search on Haiti or use the country search to get numerous primary documents covering the history of Haiti from colonial time to the present.
Haiti: An Island Luminous
Created by historian Adam M. Silvia and hosted online by Digital Library of the Caribbean, it combines rare books, manuscripts, and photos scanned by archives and libraries in Haiti and the United States with commentary by over one hundred (100) authors from universities around the world. Select your language, then click "Learn" to get started.
Colony in Crisis: The Saint-Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789
A digital humanities project regarding the colony of Saint-Domingue in 1789. The site is designed to provide translated excerpts of 18th century pamphlets from French to English to increase access to rare documents.
The Louverture Project
TLP collects and promotes knowledge, analysis, and understanding of the Haitian revolution of 1791–1804. This unique history project follows the example of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, and is committed to creating a vast, accessible, and useful open content resource.

Collins Memorial Library

FREN 480: French in the Americas

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Advice from Your Liaison Librarian

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Online Resources