Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Katharina Weygold is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies. She specializes in Black internationalism, 20th-century African American history, U.S. imperialism, and transnational American studies. In her dissertation, she studies African American women’s ideas about Haiti and their writing, performances, artwork, and interactions and collaborations with Haitians, in the context of U.S. imperialism in Haiti from the U.S. occupation (1915–1934) to the Duvalier regime (1957–1986). Drawing on archival sources and oral histories, the project explores how focusing on women changes our understanding of the meaning of Haiti and U.S. imperialism for African Americans. Weygold holds an M.A. in public humanities from Brown University and an M.A. in American studies from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Her research has received funding from the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture at Duke University, and the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in the Netherlands.