Anti-Haitianism, Statelessness, and Religious Practice in the Bahamas
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About the lecture:
Dr. Bertin M. Louis, Jr. (Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American & Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky) will lecture on the development of religious habitus through embodied worship at a Haitian Protestant church. There, stateless second-generation Haitians worship within a Black, Christian and anti-Haitian Bahamas. Adherent use of Haitian Protestant hymnody, liturgical dance and prayer reflects social processes of individual and collective self-remaking through embodied and linguistic practices. This creates a unique, hybrid Christian habitus which helps them negotiate cultural belonging in the Bahamas.
Bertin M. Louis, Jr. (Ber-tin Em Lou-ee, Junior) PhD is Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American & Africana Studies (AAAS) at the University of Kentucky. Louis is the co-editor of the recently published Conditionally Accepted: Navigating Higher Education from the Margins (University of Texas Press, 2024). He is the winner of the 2023 Sam Dubal Memorial Award for Anti-Colonialism and Racial Justice in Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Louis is also the winner of the 2023-2024 Wenner-Gren Fellowship in Anthropology and Black Experiences (administered by the School for Advanced Research).
Bertin served as President of the Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA - a section of the AAA [2021-2023]), is the current ABA Secretary/Co-Treasurer (2023-2025), a past Editor of Inside Higher Ed’s Conditionally Accepted column, a former contributor to Higher Ed Jobs, and a co-editor for the Truthout series called “Challenging the Corporate University.”
Dr. Louis served as the inaugural director of undergraduate studies for AAAS (2019-2021) at the University of Kentucky and Vice Chair of the Africana Studies Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2014-2019). Dr. Louis studies the growth of Protestant forms of Christianity among Haitians transnationally, which is featured in his New York University Press book, “My Soul is in Haiti: Protestantism in the Haitian Diaspora of the Bahamas (2015)” which was a Finalist for the 2015 Haitian Studies Association Book Prize in the Social Sciences. He also studies human rights, statelessness among Haitians in the Bahamas, and antiracist social movements in the US South. His current work deals with anti-Haitianism in the Bahamas. Dr. Louis teaches courses in Black Studies and Cultural Anthropology, and he received his PhD in 2008 from the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in Saint Louis.
Dr. Louis is also the owner and founder of Navigating Higher Education (NHE), an award-winning academic consulting firm which offers higher education-related services and empowers its clients to find and secure academic positions.