Upcoming Workshop: September 25, 2008 Prof. Miranda Spieler Dept. of History, University of Arizona The Crimes of History,  the Rights of Man, and the "Taubira Law"  Revisited: Rethinking the Revolutionary Colonial Era, and the Origins of Haiti,  from a Reparationist Perspective This paper offers an historical critique of the contemporary controversy  in France surrounding slavery and the slave trade to explore the way recognition of those acts as "crimes against humanity" in the Taubira Law (2001) came accompanied with a refusal by modern-day republicans to assume  any degree of moral  responsibility toward descendants of slaves, the former French colony of Haiti, or African states. Paradoxically, recent French denunciations of past injustices in the name  of the 1789 rights charter have conjured a quasi-official, exculpatory narrative of the colonial past with contemporary legal implications. After examining the contemporary French discourse about the place of Atlantic slavery in the national past, I  debunk historical claims that have become central to that discourse through a revisionist account of French Revolutionary colonial policy. That revisionist account of the period during and shortly after the Revolution in turn  suggests an alternative vocabulary, and moral grounds,  for defining the present responsibility  of the international community and France in particular  toward the Haitian Republic Paper will be available the week of September 13. Ethnohistory Workshop Schedule 2008-2009 Redress-Revenge-Reparations Venue: History Lounge, College Hall 209, Department of History Time: 4.30-6.30 PM Fall Schedule of Workshops September 25, 2008 Prof. Miranda Spieler, Dept. of History, University of Arizona “The Crimes of History, the Rights of Man, and the "Taubira Law"  Revisited: Rethinking the Revolutionary Colonial Era, and the Origins of Haiti,  from a Reparationist Perspective” October 23, 2008 Prof. Uday Mehta, Dept. of Political Science, Amherst College November 20, 2008 Prof. Rocío Silva Santisteban, Dept. of Humanities, Pontifica Universidad Católica de Perú and Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Perú December 11, 2008 Prof. Anne Norton, Dept. of Political Science, UPenn Spring Schedule of Workshops January 29, 2009 Prof. Sergei Alex Oushakine, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literature, Princeton University February 26, 2009 Prof. David Eng, Dept. of English, UPenn March 19, 2009 Prof. Deborah Thomas, Dept. of Anthropology, UPenn April 16, 2009 Alison Saar, Artist The Ethnohistory Program at the University of Pennsylvania
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