Britain's 1802 Man of the Year was Haiti's Toussaint Louverture: Mix of Folktales & Panel Discussion
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2020-11-09

Charlot Lucien’s segment looks at the opportunities to use history to tell stories and use stories to tell his country’s history. Over the years, having to present about Haiti both as a storyteller and as an artist in various circles, he sometimes found skeptical audiences unable to grasp that some 215 years ago a group of isolated slaves, removed from their native mother lands in Africa and oppressed by the fiercest European slave-states, were able to muster the courage, wit, ferocity and audacity to defeat such states and proclaim and independent nation. During these times, emerge oversized, fantastic characters, such as Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, Sanite Belair… who seem to be perceived today as the stuff of legend, more folk characters than real life revolutionaries. Charlot uses the art of storytelling and lean of well researched academic publications to revive and some of them or episodes of their complex trajectories. His presentation will encompass a mix of storytelling and folktales that will take us to mysterious Haiti, the use of PowerPoint slides featuring Haitian historical facts on Toussaint Louverture and panel discussion.

The Panelists:

Charlot Lucien
Professor Charles Fosdick
Dr. Gabriella Beckles-Raymond
Dr Joanne Davis, Moderator

Find out more at: www.soas.ac.uk/fest-ideas/