1917–1940s: (Women and the Archive — Indigénisme and the LFAS as Intellectual Practice, Price-Mars in 1917 Lecturing Elite Women on “Women of Tomorrow” Argui…

1917–1940s: (Women and the Archive — Indigénisme and the LFAS as Intellectual Practice, Price-Mars in 1917 Lecturing Elite Women on “Women of Tomorrow” Arguing That Despite Their Differences Poor and Elite Women Were Ultimately Bound by Shared African Ancestry, the LFAS Incorporating This Challenge to Suture the Cleavage Between Women of Different Classes Through the Professionalized Research Practice of the Institut d’Ethnologie in the 1940s, LFAS Member Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain Studying Women and Girls in the Rural Peasant Class and Urban Poor, Scholars Like Price-Mars and Jacques Roumain Founding the Institut d’Ethnologie and Providing Tours Resources and Connections Often Coordinated by Women That Allowed Zora Neale Hurston Katherine Dunham Lavinia Williams Melville Herskovits and Alfred Métraux to Do Their Work): Where scholars differ on the political significance of the early women’s movement, there is little disagreement about these women as thinkers and intellectuals. The LFAS leadership included the first woman lettered attorney, first woman anthropologist, first woman gynecologist, and first woman social worker — women who implemented the philosophies and methods of their respective disciplines in their politics. In the 1930s and ’40s this scholarship was particularly influenced by Haitian indigénisme, the cultural nationalist and research practice developed by Jean Price-Mars that petitioned Haitian theorists and politicians to privilege Haiti’s African ethnic ancestry. In 1917 Price-Mars had lectured elite women on “Women of Tomorrow,” arguing that despite their differences poor and elite women were ultimately bound by shared African ancestry. In the 1930s his intellectual peers included LFAS members who incorporated the challenge to suture the cleavage between women of different classes. Indigénisme was professionalized through the Institut d’Ethnologie in the 1940s and fused into the research practices of intellectuals like LFAS member Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, whose most frequent subject of study was women and girls in the rural peasant class and the urban poor. As scholars like Price-Mars and Jacques Roumain founded the Institut d’Ethnologie and led the field of anthropology in Haiti, they provided the tours, resources, and connections — often coordinated by women — that allowed scholars like Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Lavinia Williams, Melville Herskovits, and Alfred Métraux to do their work and develop theories of humanity and Blackness that traveled the world.