Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau and the Politics of Pedagogy

Abstract

Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau is most well-known for her leadership and professional pioneering as the first Haitian woman lawyer and founder of the Haitian women’s rights organization La Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale in 1934. She is, however, less often acknowledged as one of many women in the early and mid-twentieth century who used education, in particular the design, creation, and publication of school materials, to communicate anticolonial politics and shape the intellectual trajectory of the nation’s young people. This essay looks at two volumes of Sylvain-Bouchereau’s authored and published social studies books, La Famille Renaud, Volumes 1 et 2, to consider the national and global scope of her intersectional feminist political practice in the mid-twentieth century.