Shifting River Geographies in Haiti: Place-Making of Intersectional Vulnerabilities and Flood Risk in Haiti

In Haiti, disasters and ecological crises reveal geographic, socio-economic, and political structures that disrupt community livelihoods, resilience, and cultural landscapes. In Cap-Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti, flooding is a significant problem; communities are inundated, livelihoods are endangered, and property and crops are destroyed. This talk focuses on northern Haitian river communities, emblematic of a shifting space and place where opportunities and risks converge. Drawing from anthropological fieldwork in Haiti and Black feminist environmental ethics, I examine narrative experiences, intersectional vulnerabilities, and the impact of flooding. This talk argues for a critical intervention to explore disasters through a multidimensional lens and consider the interconnected challenges that threaten Caribbean ecological futures. By embracing black feminism and tapping into local knowledge, this presentation advocates for an inclusive and multidisciplinary approach to disaster research, environmental studies, and disaster recovery planning.



Dr. Crystal Felima is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African American & Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She earned her PhD in Anthropology with graduate certifications in Disaster and Emergency Management and Latin American Studies from the University of Florida. Before academia, Felima worked as an emergency management specialist, geospatial analyst, and equity advisor at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, DC. She is working on her first book project, highlighting the local flood experiences of Haitians in northern Haiti. As a transdisciplinary scholar, Felima works collaboratively across disciplines and fields. She is a Co-PI on a recently awarded NIH grant and works with colleagues in the UKY College of Medicine on an environmental health project in eastern Ohio. Felima is a co-series editor for the Berghan Books’ Catastrophes in Context series and a Haitian Studies Association Board Member.

The City after Property: Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit

In the early 2010s, the Motor City became a laboratory for reimagining postindustrial futures. A skeleton of its former self, city officials classified a staggering 150,000 lots—more than a third of Detroit’s land—as “vacant” or “abandoned,” designations that elided as much as they revealed. The notion of a city with too much land grabbed media headlines. As plans unfolded to shrink and green Detroit, a paradox emerged. Even as the city’s land problem was widely characterized as one of abundance (too much land and too little demand), it became more difficult for many residents to acquire land and stay in their homes. In this talk, Sara Safransky draws from A People’s Atlas of Detroit (2020) and her new book The City After Property to explore the complex questions of justice at the heart of this paradox. To understand how a city could have too much land but not enough to go around, Safransky rereads narratives of postindustrial decline. She argues that to more adequately confront the politics of abandonment that shape struggles over urban futures, we must go beyond seeing property as simply a thing that one owns (i.e., the land itself) and interrogate it as a historical and racialized construct, an ideology, and a moral force that shapes selves and worlds. In other words, we must ask what comes after property?  

Sara Safransky is a human geographer and Assistant Professor in the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of The City after Property, co-editor of A People’s Atlas of Detroit, and co-producer of its sister documentary, A People’s Story of Detroit. Her writing can be found in Antipode, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environment & Planning D, Urban Geography, and elsewhere.