Rebecca Hope Dirksen

Rebecca Dirksen is associate professor (as of July 1) in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. She will devote the fellowship year to “Against Scorched Earth: Haitian Vodou as Sacred Ecology,” a multimodal project combining scholarship with public-facing activism toward environmental justice. This theme opens up exploration of how humanity, the divine, and the environment intersect in powerful ways, with the sacred Vodou drum—the tanbou–seen at the center of these intersections. The fellowship will support work on a book manuscript, the production of ecologically relevant music videos in partnership with Haitian artists and activists, and efforts to expand the scope and reach of a museum exhibit about Haiti’s sacred drums and trees in the face of centuries of deforestation and environmental degradation.