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LAGW Seminar: Crafting Dominicanidad: Citizenship and Education During the US Occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924

March 9, 2023 @ 2:00 pm 4:00 pm

Gilman Hall 308

The Johns Hopkins Latin America in a Globalizing World works in progress seminar welcomes Professor Alexa Rodríguez, Education, University of Virginia, to present:

Crafting Dominicanidad: Citizenship and Education During the US Occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924

In 1919, a father in Santiago, Dominican Republic wrote to the regional superintendent declaring, “A family man as I am, fully aware of my deberes, I have never allowed my children to stop fulfilling their deber to attend school.” During the US occupation between 1916 to 1924, Dominican guardians argued it was their deber, or duty, to ensure their children received an education, whether through schools funded with resources from the national government or their local community, or within their own homes. This work-in-progress examines how non-elite Dominican guardians and community members across the Dominican Republic tied notions of responsibility and education to offer counternarratives of Dominican citizenship in this period of US military control. It explores how non-elite Dominican guardians and community members in both urban and rural areas practiced community-based notions of civic duty in their demands to the US and Dominican officials and their efforts to sustain schools without government assistance. This was in stark contrast to paternalistic arguments made by US and Dominican education officials about the government’s responsibility in providing schools to educate Dominicans on how to be citizens. Since many parents and guardians wrote to education administrators and US officials about the policies, this paper uses correspondence preserved in the Dominican National Archives to highlight their perspectives.

“Please email Prof. Casey Lurtz ([email protected]) for a copy of the paper and the Zoom link.”

Location: Gilman Hall 308