Notre Dame professor Richman to speak about 2010 Haiti earthquake

APRIL 11, 2012
by Tina T. Underwood, Media Relations

Notre Dame professor and cultural anthropologist Karen Richman will speak Thursday, April 12 at 7 p.m. in Daniel Memorial Chapel about the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital and surrounding areas.

The 2012 Hesburgh Alumni Lecture, “Run From the Earthquake, Fall into the Abyss: A Léogane Paradox,” is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Office of the Chaplains in partnership with the Notre Dame Club of the Western Carolinas.

Richman’s talk will focus on Koridò, a hamlet in the rural community of Léogane, Haiti, near the quake’s epicenter, and how the  people of Koridò survived the cataclysm almost unscathed. She describes why the community is still nonetheless standing precariously at the edge of the abyss.

The Hesburgh lecture is named in honor of Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame. Its purpose is to encourage intellectual dialogue between alumni, community members and the distinguished faculty of Notre Dame.

At Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute of International Studies, Richman is director of the Center for Migration and Border Studies. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Her academic and research interests include religion, migration, transnationalism, performance, gender, production and consumption in Mexico, the Caribbean (Haiti), and the United States.

For more information about the event, contact Susan Bennett in the Office of the Chaplains at 864-294-2133, or susan.bennett@furman.edu.