Karen Richman

Director of the Center for Migration and Border Studies

Office: 230 McKenna Hall
Phone: 574-631-8146
Email: krichman@nd.edu

Areas of Expertise

Haiti, Haitian culture

A cultural anthropologist, Richman is one of the world’s leading scholars on Haitian culture, migration, religion, vodou, labor and language. The author of “Migration and Vodou,” Richman discredits myths of exotic and primitive vodou long used against Haitians. The book provides a rare excursion into the innovative ways a community of Léogane, Haiti, migrants has maintained religious traditions and familial connections. She says one out of every five Haitians is thought to live outside the country and that last year Haitians sent back $1 billion in remittances. She says Haitian families raise children to emigrate rather than producing capital-generating products and that the Jan., 2010, earthquake upset the delicate and vulnerable reciprocity of the Haitians’ culture of migration. Richman also is the author of an ethnographic biography of a Mexican immigrant woman. She has conducted fieldwork on American consumer culture and worked as an advocate for immigrants and migrant farm workers in the United States.

Richman teaches a Creole language course at Notre Dame and also has created a free, online version of the course, that she says would be useful for anyone wanting to help with Haiti relief efforts. The course is available here