This group’s project aims to improve HHI’s service and research in Haiti through a postcolonial analysis of their past and current efforts. By extension, other cross-cultural philanthropic and academic activities will benefit from this constructive critique, and a bit more attention will be shown to the neglected nation of Haiti. To these ends, the following questions will guide this endeavor:

  1.  What themes in current postcolonial theory illuminate and problematize HHI’s involvement in rural Haiti especially vis-à-vis its free health clinics?
  2. What postcolonial challenges—specific to Haiti’s history, culture, language, and geography—has HHI encountered in the arrangement of their clinics, in their diagnosis and treatment of patients, in their medical recordkeeping, and in the research they conduct from those records? And how have they addressed these challenges?
  3. What are the perceived effects of HHI’s free clinics on both patients and volunteers as attested by those groups?
  4. What principles of postcolonial responsibility would improve HHI’s subsequent work as well as other cross-cultural academic and philanthropic activities?

Interested faculty and students who wish to join this research group are encouraged to contact Jeremy Browne (Office of Digital Humanities).