Bioengineering major Bridget Woody ’20 wanted to challenge the idea of military occupation in the name of civility. “The main theme I wanted to convey was how ruthless the U.S. occupiers were” in Haiti from 1915-1934, she says of her honors paper published in SCU’s Historical Perspectives.
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Woody specifically looked at America’s attempts to stigmatize and eradicate Haiti’s Afro-Creole religion of vodou. She sees a lot of parallels today as large military powers continue to meddle around the globe.
In Haiti, “American forces and the U.S. government were really concerned with non-American values, and were fearful of them,” she says.