3rd to 6th October 2018
Miami, Florida

CFP Deadline: 1 June 2018

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
● Tidalectics/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 June 1st 2018 to westindianlit37@gmail.com.

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)

Above text adapted from email.