Film shoot, Restauracion, Dominican Republic, May 2025. Credit: Katie McKeever
Production & Co-Direction of a Short Ethnographic Film
My dissertation, Shapeshifting Bodies, Morphing Landscapes, explores how transformation myths in Haiti and the Dominican Republic challenge state violence and racialized borders. I am producer and co-director of a short film project, alongside co-director Katie McKeever, that features bilingual (Spanish/Creole) readings of poems from Las Metamorfosis de Makandal (1998) by Dominican poet Manuel Rueda, performed by people living along the border. The film investigates tensions between current border policies and poetic narratives of metamorphosis, connecting humans, spirits, and ecosystems. Inspired by Notre Cahier (2013) by the Kanor sisters, it reflects on poetic listening as a political and memorial act.
2024 - 2025
Projects
Colmado by night, Santo Domingo, May 2025. Credit: Carine Schermann
Collaborative Workshops
“Astrology, U.S. Soft Power, and the Caribbean”
In Fall 2023, I organized a French-English translation workshop for undergraduate students centered on a 1960s French horoscope, allegedly written by the CIA to influence Caribbean politics during Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship. The workshop included discussions on the historical context of the Duvalier regime, Haitian astrological beliefs and practices, and U.S. soft power strategies in the region. This project was developed in collaboration with researcher Martin Munro, filmmaker and photographer Leah Gordon, and two doctoral students.
“Makandal in the Languages of the Border”
In May 2025, in Santo Domingo, I organized a poetic translation workshop from Spanish to Haitian Creole, focused on Las Metamorfosis de Makandal by Dominican writer Manuel Rueda. Participants included artists, poets, activists, and scholars from the island and its diaspora. Together, we explored language, history, and Caribbean imagination through the voice of a mythical figure.
2024 - 2025
First issue of the journal Trois/cent/Soixante, "Colère", and Haitian flag, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2016. Credit: Maude Malengrez
Co-Creation and Edition of Multidisciplinary Haitian Journal
Trois/Cent/Soixante was born out of a passionate conversation among friends in Port-au-Prince. Alongside writers, researchers, artists, and activists, we founded this interdisciplinary journal to create a space for critical thought rooted in Haiti but firmly oriented toward the world. Designed as a hybrid form blending poetry, translation, archives, in-depth articles, and testimonies, each issue invites sensitive exchanges across disciplines, territories, and generations. This project remains one of my most meaningful commitments to a decentralized, collective, and radically diasporic editorial creation.
2015 - 2020