News
Resolution on the proposed closure of the Caribbean Studies Programme at London Metropolitan University, approved by a unanimous vote at the UK Society for Caribbean Studies Annual General meeting, held on the 30 June 2011 at the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool:
We as a Society hereby register our strong disapproval of the on-going running down and threatened closure of the Caribbean teaching and research programme at LMU, the redundancies of key staff members working within the programme, the uncertain future of the remaining staff and programme of the Centre for Caribbean and Latin American Research and Consultancy (CLARC), and the uncertain provision for students currently enrolled on the Caribbean degrees.
The teaching programme in Caribbean Studies at LMU offers an unparalleled breadth and depth of coverage of the Caribbean and is the only such undergraduate programme in the UK. Opportunities to study the Caribbean region are scarce, and as such the London Metropolitan programme has served a national role. Moreover, internationally esteemed academics working within the Caribbean programme produce high-quality research that has contributed considerably to advancing knowledge in their respective fields. It is a travesty that this degree should be closed down, particularly given that it serves such a unique role in engaging London's large Caribbean diaspora community, as well as the wider community.
Calls for Papers
Call For Papers
36th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies
Wednesday 4th to Friday 6th July 2012
Rewley House and Kellogg College
University of Oxford
The Society for Caribbean Studies invites submissions of short abstracts of no more than 250 words for research papers on the Hispanic, Francophone, Dutch and Anglophone Caribbean and their diasporas for this annual international conference. Papers are welcomed from all disciplines and can address the themes outlined below. We welcome abstracts for papers that fall outside this list of topics, and we particularly welcome proposals for complete panels, which should consist of three papers. Those selected for the conference will be invited to give a 20-minute presentation.
Abstracts should be submitted along with a short CV by 6th January, 2012. Proposals received after the deadline may not be considered.
PROVISIONAL PANELS
Oxford and the Caribbean
Independence
Sport and athletics
Cuba in the Caribbean
Knowledge production and circulation
Life-writing, memoir, and biography
Caribbean economics, past, present and future
Citizenship, borders, and intraregional migration
To submit an abstract online, click here
The Society will provide a limited number of postgraduate bursaries for presenters to assist with registration and accommodation costs. Postgraduate researchers should indicate that they are seeking a bursary when submitting their abstract, but please note that travel costs cannot be funded.
Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Award, the deadline for which is also 6th January, 2012. For more information on the Bridget Jones Award, contact Kate Quinn at kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk or visit the website.
For further queries please contact the Conference Coordinator, Lorna Burns, at societyforcaribbeanstudies@gmail.com.
Call for Papers - Journal of Postcolonial Writing
‘Scapes’ of Globlity: New Critical Approaches to Wilson Harris
Wilson Harris’s highly experimental writing incorporates spatio-temporal ruptures, intersections, fusions, fluidities, and overlapping discourses. This special issue situates the author’s poetics in the context of recent and emerging debates about the globalizing world, immanence, and the work of postcolonial literatures. The Caribbean is often seen to be a forerunner in the long history of globalization through (forced) migration, cross-cultural contact, transnational flows of trade and investment, and creolization. Harris’s work explores the proleptic New World in a global context, highlighting the interfaces between old, new, and emerging imperialisms as well as alternative conceptions, experiences, and perceptions of place and worldly relations. In this global context, contributors might consider the ways in which the non-hierarchical, diverse planes of immanence theorised by Harris as ‘the unfinished genesis of the imagination’ offers a New World poetics which extends beyond the ongoing work of decolonization to refigure postcoloniality as the immanent production of a radically new present/future born of the colonial past and, at the same time, an articulation of alternative spatio-temporal paradigms and ‘-scapes’ of globality. Harris’s ‘-scapes’ invite us to consider new critical perspectives concerning a sense of location and trans-locality in a changing world order.
Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:
- The figuration of the proleptic Caribbean in a global context.
- The state of exception, trauma studies and approaches to working through related histories of violence, oppression, and terror.
- Post-continental philosophies of time, space, immanence, and the 'event' of the new.
- The politics of aesthetics/poetics.
- Harris’s time-scapes and/or land-scapes.
- Eco-critical perspectives, planetary thought and metaphors of (re)mapping and de/reterritorialisation.
- Surrealist aesthetics, experimental writing, and the creolization of discourses/genres.
If you have queries or wish to discuss a proposal in more detail, please feel free to email Lorna Burns at lorna.burns@glasgow.ac.uk and/or Wendy Knepper at wendy.knepper@brunel.ac.uk.
Deadline for Submission: November 18, 2011.
Call for Papers: Special Issue of EnterText on Caribbean Literature and Culture
Opening Out the Way(s) to the Future
“We can orient for the future only by comprehension of the present in the light of the past,” observed the Caribbean philosopher, C.L.R. James. In his view, the arts and culture could provide direction and offer alternatives to present horizons. The “supreme artist,” he argued “summed up the past and […] opened out the way to the future.” In the Caribbean context, the need to envision alternatives to present horizons has taken on a new sense of urgency, particularly given the many challenges facing the Caribbean today, such as the exploitative dimensions of global capitalism, ecological risk, natural and health disasters -- as in recent events in Haiti and St. Lucia -- gender discrimination, sex tourism, labour exploitation, drugs and violent crime.
We invite scholars and creative writers of the Caribbean and its diasporas to explore present horizons and the (re-)envisioning of the future through an engagement with the past. More generally, this special issue on the Caribbean is concerned with questions such as: how can the creative and critical potential of the arts, social sciences, and humanities be harnessed to open out the way to the future? What insights do different experiences of lived time and space offer to contemporary historical and political perspectives? How do non-Western notions of time relate to revolutionary dreams and resistance movements, and visions of the Caribbean’s role in the global order? How do Caribbean artists, writers, historians, leaders, and philosophers represent the uses of the past? What are the perils and possibilities of looking to the past as a resource for navigating an uncertain future?
We particularly welcome revised versions of papers initially presented at the 35th Annual Society of Caribbean Studies Conference, Liverpool, 2011. Topics for the special issue include, but are by no means limited to:
• Liverpool and the Caribbean
• The Fall of the Plantation Complex
• Museums and Caribbean Histories
• Slavery, Commemoration, and Representation
• Ports and Cities
• Health, Social Policy, and Disability
• Environment and Natural Disasters
• The Challenges of Democracy
• Childhood and Education
• Theatre, Dance, and Performance
• Food and Material Culture
• Colonial Governance and Decolonisation
We also welcome creative writing submissions related to the topics of this special issue.
Editors of the special issue are Sandra Courtman and Wendy Knepper
Deadline for submission April 15, 2012
Length for scholarly articles: 5000-7500 words
Please address questions, proposals and submissions to s.courtman@sheffield.ac.uk.
To view a PDF version of the call for papers, click here.
Conferences and Events
October 2011
October 13-15, 2011
St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago
30th Annual West Indian Literature Conference
“I Dream to Change the World: Literature and Social Transformation”
UWI-St Augustine
Contact Geraldine.Skeete@sta.uwi.edu or Giselle.Rampaul@sta.uwi.edu
November 2011
November 15-18, 2011Nassau, Bahamas
2011 Caribbean Regional Conference of Psychology
“Psychological Science and Well-Being: Building Bridges for Tomorrow”
Bahamas Psychological Association (BPA), International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS), International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) & International Association for Cross Cultural Psychology (IACCP)
Website http://www.caribbeanpsychology.org
Contact ishtargovia@gmail.com or info@crcp2011.org
November 18-21, 2011
Nassau, Bahamas
2011 Caribbean HIV Conference: “Strengthening Evidence to Achieve Sustainable Action”
Government of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas & University of Puerto Rico
Website https://www.2011caribbeanhivconference.org
Contact jones.madeira@gmail.com