Conference, 5-7 July 2012, Kingsville, Texas

Texas A&M University-Kingsville

Susan Roberson kfslr00@tamuk.edu

Keynote Speaker: Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Columbia University

Call for papers: Because the Caribbean represents the confluence of peoples and cultures—from Europe, Africa, and the Americas—first through trade routes and colonization and then through the dispersion of its literature and culture in a contemporary diaspora back out to the larger world, it provides a paradigm for studying the processes and effects of globalization. A culturally and linguistically rich region of the world that includes English, French, Spanish, Dutch and native creoles, the Caribbean also provides a fascinating literature that is complicated by its history and location.

Topics include:

• early periods of discovery, colonization, and resistance in the Caribbean
• the post colonial period and contemporary Caribbean diaspora
• theoretical understandings of the transnational transport of peoples, languages, and literatures as they pertain to the Caribbean
• ways Caribbean writers negotiate colonial history in the construction of literary identities
• literary representations of place, empire, and the post colonial condition from a Caribbean perspective
• strategies for teaching Caribbean literature at the university and secondary school levels.

Please send panel proposals and/or paper abstracts (300 words) with a brief biographical statement (150 words) to Susan Roberson at kfslr00@tamuk.edu by February 15, 2012