Pa Manyen Fanm Yo Konsa: Intersectionality, Structural Violence, and Vulnerability Before and After Haiti’s Earthquake

Lecture: Dr. Mark Schuller, CUNY

To understand the narratives and realities Haitian women face, it is critical to first understand structural violence, the long-term, often invisible system of inequality and poverty and how structural violence intersects with what Black feminist scholars have called intersectionality, the multiple forms of oppression based on distinct but overlapping identities, such as of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and parental status. Through the testimonies and lived realities of Haitian women, this talk highlights the continuities yet also clearly demonstrates how life was worse following the quake.

Mark Schuller is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at York College (CUNY). Supported by the National Science Foundation and others, Schuller’s research on globalization, NGOs, gender, and disasters in Haiti has been published in over a dozen book chapters and peer-reviewed articles as well as public media, including a column in Huffington Post. He is the author of forthcoming Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International aid, and NGOs (Rutgers, 2012) and co-editor of four volumes, including Tectonic Shifts: Impacts of Haiti’s Earthquake, to be published in January by Kumarian Press. He is co-director / co-producer of documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (Documentary Educational Resources, 2009). He chairs the Society for Applied Anthropology’s Human Rights and Social Justice Committee and is active in many solidarity efforts.