Read the Revolution Speaker Series with Julia Gaffield and Marlene L. Daut

Dr. Julia Gaffield, Associate Professor of History at William & Mary, and Dr. Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University, will join the Museum on Wednesday, February 25 to present the second public program in the Museum’s 2025-2026 Read the Revolution Speaker Series with a joint lecture and discussion inspired by their recent biographies on Haitian Revolutionaries and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Tracing the story of Haiti’s Declaration of Independence from France in 1804, Gaffield will explore the early days of the nation's independence from the perspective of its first political leader in I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom, while Daut will tell the story of how Dessalines’s successor, Henry Christophe, became Haiti’s only king in The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe. Citing archival discoveries in Haiti and around the world, Gaffield and Daut will reflect on how, after declaring independence, these formerly enslaved leaders defined freedom and shaped a legacy for a new nation. Following the presentation, Museum President and CEO Dr. R. Scott Stephenson will host an interview conversation and facilitate a live Q&A with both onsite and online audiences.  

This special program will be held in the Museum’s third-floor Liberty Hall and will be broadcast live via Zoom. Guests with onsite tickets are invited to arrive early to view The Declaration’s Journey from 5:15 p.m. to 6 p.m. Doors open to Liberty Hall at 6 p.m. for onsite guests to see a featured artifact, enjoy refreshments at a cash bar, and purchase signed copies of the featured books.  

About Dr. Julia Gaffield

Julia Gaffield received her PhD in History from Duke University in 2012 and previously taught for eight years at Georgia State University. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 

She recently published I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Haitian Revolution with Yale University Press. Her first book, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2015 and won the 2016 Mary Alice and Frederick Boucher Book Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society. Gaffield is also the editor of The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy, published by the University of Virginia Press in 2016. 

About Dr. Marlene L. Daut

An award-winning author, scholar, and professor specializing in Haitian history and culture, Marlene L. Daut's most recent book, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025), shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, explores the fascinating life of Haiti’s only king while delving into the complex history of a 19th-century Caribbean monarchy. Her other books include Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Liverpool UP, 2015); Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017); and Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press, 2023), co-winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Daut's articles on Haitian history and culture have appeared in over a dozen magazines, newspapers, and journals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Essence, The Nation, and the LA Review of Books, and she has been the recipient of several awards, grants, and fellowships for her contributions to historical and cultural understandings of the Caribbean, notably from the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Haitian Studies Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and from the Robert Silvers Foundation for The First and Last King of Haiti.  

Daut graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a B.A. in English and French in 2002 and went on to teach in Rouen, France as an Assistante d’Anglais before enrolling at the University of Notre Dame, where she earned a Ph.D. in English in 2009. Since graduating, she has taught Haitian and French colonial history and culture at the University of Miami, the Claremont Graduate University, and the University of Virginia, where she also became and remains series editor of New World Studies at UVA Press. In July 2022, she was appointed as Professor of French and Black Studies at Yale University. She lives in the New Haven, CT area with her spouse and children.