La lutte continue: Louis Mars and the genesis of ethnopsychiatry.
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2023-05
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The scientific contributions of Western mental health professionals have been lauded and leveraged for global mental health responses to varying degrees of success. In recent years, the necessity of recognizing the inefficiencies of solely etic and Western-based psychological intervention has been reflected in certain decolonial scholars like Frantz Fanon gaining more recognition. Despite this urgent focus on decolonial psychology, there are still others whose work has historically and contemporarily not received a great deal of attention. There is no better example of such a scholar than Dr. Louis Mars, Haiti's first psychiatrist. Mars made a lasting impact on the communities of Haiti by shifting the conversation around Haitian culture and the practice of how people living with a mental illness were treated. Further, he influenced the global practice of psychiatry by coining "ethnopsychiatry" and asserting that non-Western culture should be intimately considered, rather than stigmatized, in treating people around the world. Unfortunately, the significance of his contributions to ethnopsychiatry, ethnodrama, and the subsequent field of psychology has effectively been erased from the disciplinary canon. Indeed, the weight of Mars' psychiatric and political work deserves focus. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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Auguste, Evan, Garrick Beauliere, Deborah Jenson, Joanne LeBrun and Judite Blanc (2023). La lutte continue: Louis Mars and the genesis of ethnopsychiatry. The American psychologist, 78(4). pp. 469–483. 10.1037/amp0001097 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/33888.
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Scholars@Duke
Deborah Jenson
My career began with graduate training under Hélène Cixous (Paris VIII) and Barbara E. Johnson (Harvard University), and segued to faculty roles at the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque (1995-2002), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002-2008), and Duke University (2008-2025; Emerita, 2026-). I am an interdisciplinary scholar of French and Caribbean Literature and Culture, with particular interest in the “long 19th century” in France and Haiti, cognitive literary studies, health humanities, and global south philosophy. Monographs, edited volumes, and translations include: Beyond the Slave Narrative: Politics, Sex, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution (2011); Trauma and Its Representations: The Social Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (2001); Poetry of Haitian Independence (2015, with D. Kadish and N. Shapiro); Unconscious Dominions: Psychoanalysis, Colonial Trauma, and Global Sovereignty (2011, with W. Anderson and R. Keller); Sarah, A Colonial Novella (2008, with D. Kadish); and "Coming to Writing" and Other Essays by Hélène Cixous (1991). Edited journal issues include The EcoBrain: Ecologies of Cognition and Cognitive Ecologies in Ecokritike (2025, with Cate Reilly, Miguel Rojas-Sotelo, and Hugh Roberts); Representation in Neusocience and Humanities in Frontiers Integrative Neuroscience and Psychology (2022, with Marco Iacoboni and Len White); States of Freedom, Freedom of States in The Global South (2012, with Michaeline Crichlow and Patricia Northover); The Haiti Issue: 1804 and Nineteenth-Century French Studies in Yale French Studies (2005). Duke University provided the opportunity for me not only to collaborate with others around humanities labs (the “Haiti Lab,” 2010-2013, and the “Health Humanities Lab”, 2016-2020), but to serve as a Research Professor of Global Health at the Duke Institute for Global Health, and an affiliate of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, where I co-directed the Neurohumanities Research Group, Duke Neurohumanities in Paris, and the Brain and Society theme of Bass Connections. In addition to my articles in humanities journals and edited volumes, I have published collaborative work in scientific venues including The American Psychologist (2023), Epilepsy and Behavior (2020), and Emerging Infectious Diseases (2011). My administrative roles at Duke included directing the Franklin Humanities Institute (2015-2017)and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2012-2014). Teaching opportunities have built on the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of my research, with courses including “Flaubert’s Brain: Neurohumanities,” “Haiti to New Orleans,” "Pandemic Humanities: Reimagining Health and Medicine in Romance Studies," “Storytelling in Medicine and Health,” “Trauma and Global Health," "Mimesis in Theory and Practice," and "Global Humanities in French.” Recent courses have built on my interests in philosophy, and include "Sylvia Wynter and Caribbean Philosophy," and co-taught courses with Felwine Sarr (“African Philosophy” and “Africana Philosophy in French”).
As I embark on the Emeritus phase of my Duke faculty career, I am preparing, with John Gartrell, Meg Brown, and two of our Romance Studies graduate students, an exhibit and symposium for the opening of the Sylvia Wynter archives at Duke in early March2026, and I am working on the translation of a novel by the award-winning Haitian author Yanick Lahens.
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