Carine Grace Schermann

“Under the Skin: Monstrosity, Myth-Making, and Resistance Across and Beyond the Haitian-Dominican Border” is a comparative, multilingual and intermedial dissertation project that analyzes self-representation and representations of the other on and beyond the Haitian-Dominican border. This research project centers on representations of the monstrous in the island’s cultural productions, as unifying connections between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, that map out the recuperative possibilities of the Black imagination across the island. This project draws on the idea that monstrosity, as natural and supernatural “more-than-human” entities, can elicit empowering narratives of Blackness, while explaining and complicating narratives of Haitian and Dominican relations. Interdisciplinary in its methods, the dissertation borrows from ethnography to feature interviews with Haitian and Dominican artists and activists, framing their voices as powerful critical and theoretical beacons.