In addition to sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a complicated and at times painful history. Yet Transnational Hispaniola shows that there is much more to the two nations' relationship than their perceived antagonism. Rejecting dominant narratives that reinforce opposition between the two sides of the island, contributors to this volume highlight the connections and commonalities that extend across the border, mapping new directions in Haitianist and Dominicanist scholarship.Exploring a variety of topics including European colonialism, migration, citizenship, sex tourism, music, literature, political economy, and art, contributors demonstrate that alternate views of Haitian and Dominican history and identity have existed long before the present day. From a moving section on passport petitions that reveals the familial, friendship, and communal networks across Hispaniola in the nineteenth century to a discussion of the shared music traditions that unite the island today, this volume speaks of an island and people bound together in a myriad of ways.Complete with reflections and advice on teaching a transnational approach to Haitian and Dominican studies, this agenda-setting volume argues that the island of Hispaniola and its inhabitants should be studied in a way that contextualizes differences, historicizes borders, and recognizes cross-island links.Contributors: Paul Austerlitz | Nathalie Bragadir | Raj Chetty | Anne Eller | Kaiama L. Glover | Maja Horn | Regine Jean-Charles | Kiran C. Jayaram | Elizabeth Manley | April Mayes | Elizabeth Russ | Fidel J. Tavárez | Elena ValdezPublication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This book offers a critical perspective into social policy architectures primarily in relation to questions of race, national identity and belonging in the Americas. It is the first to identify a connection between the role of international actors in promoting the universal provision of legal identity in the Dominican Republic with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from populations of (largely, but not exclusively) Haitian descent. The book highlights the current gap in global policy that overlooks the possible alienating effects of social inclusion measures promulgated by international organisations, particularly in countries that discriminate against migrant-descended populations. It also supports concerns regarding the dangers of identity management, noting that as administrative systems improve, new insecurities and uncertainties can develop. Crucially, the book provides a cautionary tale over the rapid expansion of identification practices, offering a timely critique of global policy measures which aim to provide all people everywhere with a legal identity in the run-up to the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Rachel Afi Quinn investigates how visual media portray Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response to existing stereotypes. Delving into the dynamic realities and uniquely racialized gendered experiences of women in Santo Domingo, Quinn reveals the way racial ambiguity and color hierarchy work to shape experiences of identity and subjectivity in the Dominican Republic. She merges analyses of context and interviews with young Dominican women to offer rare insights into a Caribbean society in which the tourist industry and popular media reward, and rely upon, the ability of Dominican women to transform themselves to perform gender, race, and class. Engaging and astute, Being La Dominicana reveals the little-studied world of today's young Dominican women and what their personal stories and transnational experiences can tell us about the larger neoliberal world.

This book begins with a simple question: why do so many Dominicans deny the African components of their DNA, culture, and history? Seeking answers, Milagros Ricourt uncovers a complex and often contradictory Dominican racial imaginary. Observing how Dominicans have traditionally identified in opposition to their neighbors on the island of Hispaniola—Haitians of African descent—she finds that the Dominican Republic’s social elite has long propagated a national creation myth that conceives of the Dominican as a perfect hybrid of native islanders and Spanish settlers. Yet as she pores through rare historical documents, interviews contemporary Dominicans, and recalls her own childhood memories of life on the island, Ricourt encounters persistent challenges to this myth. Through fieldwork at the Dominican-Haitian border, she gives a firsthand look at how Dominicans are resisting the official account of their national identity and instead embracing the African influence that has always been part of their cultural heritage. Building on the work of theorists ranging from Edward Said to Édouard Glissant, this book expands our understanding of how national and racial imaginaries develop, why they persist, and how they might be subverted. As it confronts Hispaniola’s dark legacies of slavery and colonial oppression, The Dominican Racial Imaginary also delivers an inspiring message on how multicultural communities might cooperate to disrupt the enduring power of white supremacy.

The Order of Preachers has famously bred some of the leading intellectual lights of the Middle Ages. While Dominican achievements in theology, philosophy, languages, law, and sciences have attracted much scholarly interest, their significant engagement with liturgy, the visual arts, and music remains relatively unexplored. These aspects and their manifold interconnections form the focal point of this interdisciplinary volume. The different chapters examine how early Dominicans positioned themselves and interacted with their local communities, where they drew their influences from, and what impact the new Order had on various aspects of medieval life. The contributors to this volume address issues as diverse as the making and illustrating of books, services for a king, the disposition of liturgical space, the creation of new liturgies, and a Dominican-made music treatise. In doing so, they seek to shed light on the actions and interactions of medieval Dominicans in the first centuries of the Order's existence.

Composición social dominicana (Social Composition of the Dominican Republic), first published in 1970 in Spanish, and translated into English here for the first time, discusses the changing structure of social classes and groups in Dominican society from the first encounter between Europeans and Natives until the mid-twentieth century. This influential and pioneering book details the struggles of the Dominican people as they evolved from pre-colonial and colonial subjects to sovereign actors with the task of moving a republic forward, amidst imperialist desires and martial ambitions. Juan Bosch, one of the most well-known and best-loved Dominican politicians and scholars, here sets out the important themes that define modern Dominican society. He tackles topics such as the inter-imperialist rivalry between France, Spain, England, and Holland and its subsequent impact on the Caribbean region, as well as the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916-1924. He also discusses the aftermath of political alliances between liberals and conservatives during the birth of the Dominican Republic, the Restoration War fought against the Spanish Crown, the role of the petit bourgeoisie and the hateros (cattle-ranchers) in the formation of a Dominican oligarchy, the emergence of dictator Rafael Trujillo, and the composition of society during his time in power. This translation, introduced and contextualized by leading Dominican Studies scholar Wilfredo Lozano, opens up Bosch’s work for a new generation of scholars studying the Caribbean.

Aquí and Allá: Transnational Dominican Theater and Performance explores how contemporary Dominican theater and performance artists portray a sense of collective belonging shaped by the transnational connections between the homeland and the diaspora. Through close readings of plays and performances produced in the Dominican Republic and the United States in dialogue with theories of theater and performance, migration theory, and literary, cultural, and historical studies, this book situates theater and performance in debates on Dominican history and culture and the impact of migration on the changing character of national identity from end of the twentieth century to the present. By addressing local audiences of island-based and diasporic Dominicans with stories of characters who are shaped by both places, the theatrical performances analyzed in this book operate as a democratizing force on conceptions of Dominican identity and challenge assumptions about citizenship and national belonging. Likewise, the artists’ bi-national perspectives and work methods challenge the paradigms that have traditionally framed Latin(o) American theater studies.

Using a blend of historical and literary analysis, Colonial Phantoms reveals how Western discourses have ghosted—miscategorized or erased—the Dominican Republic since the nineteenth century despite its central place in the architecture of the Americas. Through a variety of Dominican cultural texts, from literature to public monuments to musical performance, it illuminates the Dominican quest for legibility and resistance.

In this book, Jacqueline Jiménez Polanco examines the politics of empowerment of Dominican Americans in the United States. Covering the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Jiménez Polanco provides a new analytical perspective to understand the political development of a growing ethnic community that has been historically neglected in the studies of Latino/a/x political development and whose peculiar characteristics represent a paradigmatic case that debunks pervading theories about immigrant communities’ participation and representation in U.S. electoral politics. Rich archival research and interviews with key Dominican American leaders and activists shed light on how some patterns followed by Dominican Americans in their political empowerment correspond to those of other Latino/a/x communities, while other patterns distinctly diverge from that common trend. Dominican American Politics: Immigrants, Activists, and Politicians serves as a perfect companion for courses on Latino/a/x and Dominican studies and U.S. ethnic politics.