Presented by the Rutgers British Studies Center and the Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies.
Friday, May 6, 2022
Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Abstracts and Proposals Due Friday, December 17, 2021
Further information and submission instructions here.
The organizers hope to conduct the gathering entirely in person, but depending on the state of the ongoing pandemic, the workshop may have hybrid Zoom components or may go online entirely.
More information below the break.
This workshop seeks scholars whose work reckons with some aspect of the British presence and legacy in mainland Latin America—whether in terms of formal colonial control, an “empire of neglect,” or informal empire. Especially welcome are those who question the very notion of “British Studies,” and, more generally, put critical pressure on “Area Studies” frameworks developed during the Cold War, and see their work in productive tension with such formulations.
The organizers of the symposium are particularly interested in scholarship in a variety of spaces across mainland Latin America, particularly Guyana and Belize on:
- Blackness
- Indigeneity
- Asian and South Asian community formations
- Enslavement/Emancipation
- Indenture and systems of coerced labor and carceral confinement
- Labor
- Resistance
- Crossings/Diasporas/Migrations
- Race, racial politics and racial justice
- Gender and Sexuality
- Empire
- Decolonization
- Capitalism/Neoliberalism
- Anti-communism and counter-insurgency
- Artistic production
- Community activism
- Culture/Religion
- Environmental justice
- The politics of language and translation
Organizers encourage papers that attend to the links between these themes as well as networks in a variety of spaces across the mainland Americas, but also among diverse historical actors— from the Miskitu coastal region to former circum-Caribbean British spaces like San Andres (Colombia), to British enslavers in Venezuela—dating from the sixteenth century to the present. Projects examining the relations between these spaces and actors and the United Kingdom would be most welcome. Scholarship from a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches from history, anthropology and literature to ethnic studies and film/performance studies is encouraged.
Decisions about submitted proposals will be made by January 3, 2022.
Workshop attendees will be expected to pre-circulate papers in advance of the workshop, which will take place on Friday, May 6, 2022, at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
