Seeing Disciplines, Their Histories, and Our Futures Through The Caribbean: International Workshop
December 12-13, 2013
Université des Antilles et de la
Guyane, Martinique.

Deadline for applications: 15 June 2013 (deadline extended)

A great deal of effort by anthropologists, historians, as well as political and comparative literary theorists has gone into mapping new directions for the modern study of the Caribbean in recent years. We seek to engage with and build on these efforts through a project that interrogates how disciplinary practices and self-knowledge shifts when the Caribbean is introduced and/or sustained as a core component of what scholars write and teach.

For example, although the Caribbean (its thinkers, economic, social and political history) was central to the emergence of the modern discipline of international relations, by developing increasing degrees of theoretical abstraction, international relations theorists have erased these antecedents while rewriting its history accordingly. Prior conceptions of international order were deeply wedded to and concerned about imperial imaginaries, colonial doctrines, and racialized social science. This seminar stems from our on-going efforts to shed light on the discipline’s gradual transformation of colonial and imperial themes into the scientific discourse of international relations.

We are seeking paper submissions from advanced graduate students and faculty across the humanities and social sciences working on contemporary Caribbean issues, intellectual currents, and on the region’s social and cultural history that challenge dominant conceptions of and orientations toward international or global studies broadly defined. For example, papers might discuss how disciplines have framed specific problems, e.g. of slavery, colonization, independence and decolonization, and what critical reflection on the Caribbean experience has contributed or can contribute to historiographical and other forms of theoretical reconstruction.

The works in progress will be presented and discussed in a workshop in Martinique in December 2013 hosted by the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane. The papers will be circulated in advance in order to ensure productive discussions. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered for all invited participants. Candidates should send a title, a paper synopsis (one page) and a short bio to puf.seminar.2013@gmail.com by 15 June 2013. Results will be communicated by July 1st, and the final papers should be made available to the workshop participants by November
15.

Seminar convened in the framework of the 2013-2015 initiative “From Imperial Science to International Relations” supported by the Partner University Fund.

Conveners:

• Nicolas Guilhot (Université des Antilles et de la Guyane and NYU)
• Robert Vitalis (the University of Pennsylvania)
• Chantalle Verna (Florida International University)
• William Miles (Northeastern University)