37th Annual West Indian Literature Conference
Hosted by: Hemispheric Caribbean Studies (HCS), University of Miami
October 3-6, 2018
CALL FOR PAPERS
Global Caribbean Studies: “Scapes”

abstract deadline: May 1st, 2018

from the organizers:

This year’s conference recognizes the vast routes/roots that link the Caribbean to the hemisphere and the globe. As many writers and literary scholars have noted, the immense bodies of water that appear to isolate belie the currents that intimately connect, and at times, destroy shelter, lands, and peoples. Deploying Arjun Appadurai’s concept of “scapes” that work to enable the exchange of ideas and information, we hope to engage a breadth of issues relevant to Caribbeanists in the region and its diasporas. Throughout the conference our aim will be to explore the intersections between disciplinary approaches to problems that are borne out of the shifting tides of globalization and cultural expression. Undoubtedly researchers in literary studies, anthropology, history, philosophy, medicine, sociology and environmental studies, are all concerned with issues of global migration, environmental sustainability, human rights, state power, education and other global issues that have particularly devastating impacts in the circum-Caribbean region. Our conference will examine some of the innovative approaches to addressing these issues across national, cultural and disciplinary boundaries, and particularly encourage inter, multi, and transdisciplinary conversations and panels.
Waterscapes
● Tidealectics/Archipelagos/ Repeating Islands
● Interdictions/Bodies at Sea
● Resident Time Lapse/Laps
Landscapes
● Coastal and Cultural Erosion, Resilience & Sustainability
● Creole Identities in Hemispheric Port Cities
● “Wet Foot/Dry Foot” and the Refugee Crisis
● Sand/Swamps/Mangroves
Citiscapes
● The Carceral Continuum
● Crimmigration
● Racializing Space
Soundscapes
● Religiosities/Amplifying Islam in the Caribbean Region
● Boom Sounds/Songs in Babylon
● Sonic Disturbances in Social Justice Movements
● Tidal Waves/Sound Waves/Immigration Waves
Mediascapes
● Documenting in the Digital Diaspora
● Embodied Imbalances in Social Media Movements
● Rooting/Routing Identities in the Page
● The Fantastic/Magical Realism/Le Réalisme Merveilleux
Ethnoscapes
● Decoloniality/Racialization/Pluriversality
● Queerscapes/Erotoscapes
● Generational Roots and International Routes
● Resettling Routes/Roots after Disaster
Ideoscapes
● Sovereignties/Non-Sovereignties
● Caribbean Queer Here and There
● Opacity/Maroonage/Assemblages
● Archives of Memory and Mourning
● “Wake Work”
● Weaponizing Race and Sexuality
● Anthropocene, Chthulucene and Plantationocene

Please send abstracts by May 1st 2018 to moc.liamg@73tilnaidnitsew
Conference Website will be up on April 15, 2018. In the meantime, for more information go to:
https://www.facebook.com/umhemisphericcaribbeanstudies/
http://www.as.miami.edu/windianlitconf/description/ (Available after April 15, 2018)

The winners of the 2017 CODE Burt Award for Young Adult Literature (announced at the Bocas Lit Fest) were:

1st place: The Art of White Roses by Viviana Prado-Núñez (Puerto Rico/USA)

2nd place: The Beast of Kukuyo by Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad & Tobago)

3rd place: Home Home by Lisa Allen-Agostini (Trinidad & Tobago)

The Art of White Roses and Home Home will appear from Papillote Press in May 2018; The Beast of Kukuyo is as yet unpublished.

The Burt Award website describes the prize thus:

Now in its fifth year, CODE’s annual Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature recognizes up to three English-language literary works for young adults (aged 12 through 18) written by Caribbean authors….

Publishers of winning titles will be awarded a guaranteed purchase of up to 2,500 copies, which will be donated to schools, libraries, and literacy organizations throughout the region. To date, more than 15,000 copies of winning books have made their way into the hands of Caribbean youth.

More on the Burt Award here.

On March 16, 2018, the family of Jamaican writer Garfield Ellis posted the following to his Facebook page:

The family of Garfield Ellis advise that he passed away peacefully this morning at the Scarborough General Hospital in Canada.

We know that to many of you he was a friend and a mentor and we want to take the opportunity to thank you for allowing him to be a part of your lives.

Ellis was the author of six published titles. The latest, The Angel’s Share, appeared from Akashic Books in 2016; the Globe and Mail reviewed the novel here. The other five titles are Flaming Hearts and Other Stories (1996), Wake Rasta and Other Stories (2001), Such as I Have (2003), For Nothing At All (2005), and Till I’m Laid to Rest (2010).

The author biography from Till I’m Laid to Rest reads:

Garfield Ellis grew up in Jamaica, the eldest of nine children. He studied marine engineering, management and public relations in Jamaica and he completed his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Miami, as a James Michener Fellow…. He is a two-time winner of the Una Marson prize for adult literature; has twice won the Canute A. Brodhurst prize for fiction and the 1990 Heinemann/Lifestyle short story competition.

Ellis’s reflection on his journey toward writing appears on his website, here.

Emma Lewis has posted a remembrance of Ellis (and of Jamaican ceramicist Gene Pearson, who passed away on March 15) which collates many of the expressions of grief from members of the Caribbean literary community.

Kei Miller introduces three “essay-stories” posted on his blog, Under the Saltire Flag, as follows:

So in my continued exploration of race, and how it works in Jamaica and the Caribbean, I ended up writing 3 connected essays – Mr Brown, Mrs White & Ms Black. Though in truth they turned out more like stories, or maybe they are story-essays, or essay-stories.

The pieces can be found, in order

here (Mr Brown)

here (Mrs White), and

here (Ms Black).

Today, 8 March 2018, Demerara Waves posted the news that Guyanese novelist, poet, essayist and theorist Sir Wilson Harris has died in the United Kingdom, where he had resided for many years. Reproducing the text of a statement from Professor Nigel Harris, Chancellor of the University of Guyana and Sir Wilson’s son, the news item briefly outlines the extent of Harris’s body of work and suggests its impact on generations of Caribbean writers and scholars, noting also, “In 2010, he was awarded the Honour of Knighthood for services to Literature by Queen Elizabeth. He has been nominated for the Nobel prize in literature on more than one occasion.”

See the full news item here.

Update: See the Guardian newspaper’s obituary for Harris here.

Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring (first published in 1998) is the basis for a new film called Brown Girl Begins, which is directed by Sharon Lewis and premiered in September 2017 at the Urbanworld Film Festival in New York. The film will soon be available on DVD. In a recent interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Hopkinson says of the novel, “It is technically my weakest, but it’s the one people grab onto. It’s the one they remember.”

See Hopkinson on Brown Girl and Afro-futurism here.

See Sharon Lewis discuss Brown Girl Begins here (with a trailer for the film linked at the end of the interview).

The Past Is Not Our Future: Walter Rodney’s Student Years a new film directed by Matthew Smith, out in February 2018. Described here:

Rare photos, re-enactments, personal writing and archive film are complied in this documentary exploring the early life of Walter Rodney, a renowned Guyanese revolutionary, from his university years to his emergence as a political radical in the 1960s. It’s as much a tribute to the Caribbean during the sweeping transformations of the 60s as it is to Rodney’s enduring voice.

View the trailer here.

Bridging the Gap:
Black Studies Across Social, Geographical, Epistemic, and Linguistic Lines
July 6-7, 2018 – Dakar, Senegal

from the CFP:

The Fourth International Symposium of the Dakar Institute, in collaboration with Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), the West African Research Center (WARC), and the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona, aims to bridge the gap across social, geographical, epistemic, and linguistic lines that plagues the discipline of Black Studies today. The Organizing Committee plans to create a platform that offers the possibility to revisit the transdisciplinary and transnational ambitions of the discipline beyond the aforementioned limits. We welcome papers, panels, and performances (visual, musical, dramatic, etc.) that:

• consider the limits of the US-centered Black Studies model and the constraints of its social, geographical, linguistic, epistemic, and disciplinary boundaries
• explore topics and fields of discussion beyond the US-centered tradition and/or the humanities and social sciences
• decolonize Black Studies from an interdisciplinary perspective
• rethink representation, inclusion, and equality in university institutions, teaching, and research
• confront legacies of exclusion and oppression to strengthen the rigor and accountability of our teaching, research, and institutional spaces
• compare discourses from different geographical areas
• provide new readings of the classics of Black Studies that establish a dialogue between early and contemporary generations of black scholars
• address possible radical transformation in African knowledge-making and pedagogies through theoretical and/or practical inquiries from any angle in the humanities, social sciences, arts, health sciences, math, biology, law, medicine, economics, architecture, etc.
• tackle issues in Black Studies from a multi-, inter-, or transdisciplinary perspective, or from the disciplines of education, literature, sociology, history, philosophy, dance, music, linguistics, law, religion, anthropology, economics, political science, and psychology, etc.
• present research related to the theme that has demonstrated its utility and relevance to communities and peoples in Africa and the diaspora.

Proposals for papers and panels should be no more than 250 words, with up to 5 keywords.

Proposals for artistic performances should be a maximum of 250 words and state clearly the requirements for staging the work.

Abstract deadline: March 1st, 2018

Please send your title, abstract, and a short author bio with the subject “Conference2018” to: moc.etutitsnirakadeht@ecnerefnoc

Symposium takes place: University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), October 18-20, 2018 Abstract deadline: March 31, 2018 In 1779, the first permanent resident of what was to become Chicago, IL was arrested by the British army, who suspected him of being an American sympathizer in the U.S. Revolutionary War. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable later moved to St. Charles, MO, where he died in 1818. While his home at the mouth of the Chicago River is now established as a National Historic Landmark, few people realize that this key figure in Midwestern history was of African descent, and likely of Haitian origin, arriving to the Upper Midwest through French Louisiana. He represents one of the most prominent examples of the “Unexpected Caribbean” in the Midwest, and in the greater United States. Far from being exotic and isolated islands suitable only as tourist destinations or the site of natural disasters, epidemiological crises, and charity work, Caribbean societies have long been integral to U.S. history, economies, and cultural production (as well as the histories, economies, and cultures of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and their territories and former colonies). The interplay between Caribbean cultures and people and the rest of the world reveals dynamic relationships and many instances of the Unexpected Caribbean—both within the Caribbean and outside its geographical borders. The Association of Caribbean Women Writers & Scholars (ACWWS), partnering with KU’s Institute of Haitian Studies and Center of Latin American & Caribbean Studies, is planning a two-day interdisciplinary symposium and an educator workshop for regional teachers focusing on THE UNEXPECTED CARIBBEAN, to be held on the University of Kansas campus in October 2018. One of the keynote speakers will be Ulrick Jean-Pierre, a visual artist born in Haiti whose work explores the connections between the histories and cultures of Haiti and Louisiana. Jean-Pierre’s paintings will be on display at KU’s Spencer Museum of Art during Fall 2018, and will highlight the Mary Lou Vansant Hughes Haitian art collection, including pieces by Rigaud Benoît, Wilson Bigaud, Charles Ermistral (Thialy), Max Gerbier, Edith Stephane. Conference organizers seek papers that reveal some of the unexpected moments and instances of surprise in Caribbean literature, film, history, culture, law, and landscape. We especially invite work that addresses the following: *   Caribbean art and artistry (painting, sculpture, film, music, carnival, fashion, architecture, etc.) *   Caribbean Louisiana / Caribbean presences in the Gulf of Mexico *   representations of Caribbean im/migrants in the Midwest *   creating Caribbean communities in the Midwest: the joys and challenges *   Caribbean migrations worldwide *   The Latinx Caribbean (from/in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic) *   negotiating linguistic identity/ies *   the Caribbean subject in policy and law *   Caribbean gender performances *   Exotifications of the Caribbean, incl. depictions of Caribbean religions in popular culture *   Caribbean ecologies *   Natural disasters in the Caribbean *   NGOs in the Caribbean *   The Caribbean and the Digital: media, technology, and the Digital Humanities *   Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable and/or other Caribbean “firsts” Papers will be presented in English. Reading time should not exceed 15 minutes. Please send a 300-word electronic abstract to Giselle Anatol and Cécile Accilien at moc.liamg@evitucexeswwca, by March 31, 2018. Questions can be directed to Giselle Anatol, ude.uk@lotanag, or Cécile Accilien, ude.uk@neilicca.elicec. (text taken from cfp email)