Dr. Petrouchka Moise

Dr. Petrouchka Moïse is Assistant Professor / Cultural & Community-based Digital Curator at Grinnell College Libraries. As a creative, Petrouchka’s artwork investigates the search for identity through the mediums of resin, wood, word, and water.  She is Louisiana’s first graduate with a Doctor of Design in Cultural Preservation from Louisiana State University College of Art + Design.  As an artist/scholar, she teaches classes on visual and material culture and curatorial studies, focusing on the Caribbean. In her role as Cultural and Community-Based Digital Curator, Dr. Moïse is responsible for developing interdisciplinary initiatives to enhance the learning experience of the academic and cultural community. Dr. Petrouchka Moïse is also a 2020-24 CLIR/Mellon post-doctoral alumni working with Dr. Fredo Rivera as co-PI on a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Implementation grant to launch the Haitian Arts Digital Crossroad (HADC) project. HADC is a joint initiative between the Grinnell College Library and the Waterloo Center for the Arts. Dr. Moïse designed and manages the day-to-day operations of the Haitian Art Digital Crossroads project. The HADC aims to make the Haitian art collection of the Waterloo Center for the Arts, the largest publicly held collection of Haitian art in the world, as well as other institutions with Haitian collections, digitally accessible as a preparatory study for the creation of a digital hub for a network of online resources in Haitian and Caribbean studies. In addition to managing this project, she collaborates with cultural and academic institutes within Haiti and the Diaspora to build awareness of this collection and assist academics and artistic institutions in positioning the Haitian narrative in the arts.

Dr. Moïse also focuses on the use of digital technology in the areas of archiving and public memory. With augmented reality, her research bridges the reclaimed narrative of the contemporary Haitian artist’s diverse cultural production, artistic protest, religious heritage, and mythologies to create a compelling portrait of a historically significant and intensely complex identity in flux. By analyzing their art production processes, Dr. Moïse looks to identify the Haitian signature that reshapes the artistic narrative from traumatic to triumphant.