Professor Patrick Bellegarde-Smith teaches courses on Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received a doctorate in the fields of International Politics, Latin American History and Comparative Politics from The American University. He has written extensively on issues of Haitian cultural and national identity, Haitian social thought and philosophy, and the Vodou religion. He is Haitian, and is a houngan asogwe, an initiate and priest of Vodou.