The following is a copy of the email sent to Caribbean Philosophical Association members from President Jane Gordon on 11 August 2014. The Call for Papers for the 2015 meeting – which will be held in Mexico on 18-21 June – will be available shortly, but the expected deadline for submissions is 15 December 2014.

Dear CPA members,

I hope that you are having a wonderful summer if you are in the North and a mild winter if you are receiving this in the South!

Our eleventh annual meeting in St. Louis was nothing short of historic.   Over two hundred people gathered for three days of intensive discussion and debate set in motion by the collaboration of CPA with the Simone de Beauvoir Society and the North American Sartre Society, joined by the Collegium on Black Women Philosophers, the Latina Roundtable, the Merleau-Ponty Circle, and PhiloSOPHIA.  Opening each day with a set of original poems (on Friday by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and on Saturday by Frieda Ekotto), sessions varied widely in focus from Africana existentialism, decolonizing political theory, indigeneity and the law, Caribbean sexualities, Beauvoir and Audre Lorde, decolonial ecologies and approaches to psychoanalysis and the study of Islamic philosophy to Afro-existentialism religious thought, Gloria Anzaldúa, creolizing aesthetic and political practice, the significance of black male death to critical thought, living death, Southern Marxisms, and whether there is an autochthonous black women’s existentialism.  Special highlights were Lewis Gordon’s keynote lecture outlining existential philosophy as world philosophy with broad ranging implications for how it should be understood and taught and the prize session in which recipients John Drabinski, Supriya Nair, and Abdul JanMohamed were able directly to thank Robert Bernasconi and Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo respectively for their seminal influence on the spirit with which they had undertaken their work while Leonard Harris and Frieda Ekotto explored what it is to be recognized for doing philosophy born out of struggle and Ngũgĩ wa’ Thiong’o described how transformative his encounters with Caribbean writers Walter Rodney, CLR James, and Frantz Fanon were when a student in London to the blossoming of a radical left Pan-African thought and politics.  In addition to the political feat of meeting together, panels illustrated the indispensability of such bridging conversations to the rigor of our current and future scholarship.  Discussions are already underway for holding a Diverse Lineages of Existentialism II, most likely in a U.S. city in 2017.  To view some videos about the conference, please click here.

Next year’s CPA meeting, “Shifting the Geography of Reason XXII:  Technologies of Liberation” will take place in Riviera Maya, Mexico from June 18-21^st.  The Call for Papers will go out in the next two weeks with a December deadline for panel and paper submissions.  (As next year will also be Frantz Fanon’s 90^th birthday, papers celebrating that event will be welcomed.) Several local universities have already enthusiastically offered their support for and interest in being part of the conference. The hotel, where the meeting will be held, is doing everything to make our stay there as affordable as it will be memorable. We hope that the significantly more minimal visa requirements and less expensive airfares will facilitate your participating.

Before the June 2015 meeting, we will have our first CPA summer school at UCONN.  We are currently hammering out the details but it promises to be spectacular.  Its aim is to give graduate students an opportunity to work closely with our Frantz Fanon Book Prize winners through intensive seminars focused on recipients’ current writing projects.  Augmenting these discussions will be visits to local historic sites of major Caribbean significance as well as plenty of time for open-ended and informal discussion about undertaking a life of CPA research, writing, and teaching.

Finally, we have created two new CPA essay prizes, the Claudia Jones Essay Prize for the best paper by a graduate student presented at the previous year’s annual conference and the Anna Julia Cooper Essay Prize for the best paper presented by an assistant professor or independent scholar (within five years of receiving the Ph.D.) at the previous year’s annual conference.  Nominations for these can be made by anyone who was registered for and attended the previous year’s meeting and should articulate the merit of the particular essay, including evidence of the animated discussion it generated.  Recipients of these prizes will be announced on January 1^st of each year, along with those being awarded the Frantz Fanon Book Prize, the Frantz Fanon Life Time Achievement Award, and the Nicolás Guillén Prize for Philosophical Literature.

We look forward to seeing you in Mexico, if not before!  In the meantime, stay well, and, if you’re so inclined, check us out on Twitter: https://twitter.com/caribphil !!

Sincerely,

Jane Gordon

CPA President

REVISED Deadline to apply: 31 August 2014

Lydia Cabrera Awards are available to support the study of Cuba between 1492 and 1868. Awards are designed specifically to support:

1) original research on Cuban history in Spanish, Mexican, and U. S. archives;
2) the publication of meritorious books on Cuba currently out of print; and
3) the publication of historical statistics, historical documents, and guides to Spanish archives relating to Cuban history between 1492 and 1868.

A limited number of awards will be made annually up to a maximum of $5,000. The awards will be made by a committee appointed by the CLAH president and confirmed by the CLAH General Committee.

Applicants must be trained in Latin American history and possess knowledge of Spanish. Successful applicants will be expected to disseminate the results of their research in scholarly publications and/or professional papers delivered at scholarly conferences and public lectures at educational institutions.

Applicants for original research are to be currently engaged in graduate studies at a U. S. institution or be affiliated with a college/university faculty or accredited historical association in the United States. Each applicant should provide a two-page curriculum vita, a detailed itinerary and a budget statement, a three-page narrative description of the proposed project, and three letters of support. Republication proposals should include letter(s) of intent from a publisher.

Applications and letters of support must be emailed to [email protected] by 31 August 2014. The Secretariat should be informed of the committee’s decision no later than 15 October 2014.

All applicants for the Cabrera Awards must be CLAH members. Non-members can join the CLAH here.

While applications and letters of support must be sent to the email address above, questions may be directed to any member of the selection committee.

Cabrera Prize Committee for 2014:

David Wheat (chair): [email protected]
Michele Reid-Vazquez (chair 2015): [email protected]
William Van Norman: [email protected]

Above adapted from emailed announcement.

Nine Caribbean artists and two curators are engaged in a large-scale, long range project described as:

a pioneering exploration of the influences of Carnival on contemporary performance practices in the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. Conceived around a series of nine commissioned performances realized during the 2014 Caribbean Carnival season across eight cities in six different countries, the exhibition considers the connections between Carnival and performance, masquerade and social criticism, diaspora and transnationalism. Taking its title from a pun on “Mas” (short for masquerade and synonymous with carnival in the English-speaking Caribbean), EN MAS’ considers a history of performance that does not take place on the stage or in the gallery but rather in the streets, addressing not the few but the many.

Some of these performances have already taken place and these and related events are being archived on the EN MAS’ website hosted by Independent Curators International (ICI). The project is co-organized with the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, where the tour of the completed exhibition will begin in March 2015. The project is curated by Claire Tancons and Krista Thompson. The nine artists involved are: John Beadle, Mario Benjamin, Charles Campbell, Hew Locke, Lorraine O’Grady, Ebony G. Patterson, Cauleen Smith, Nicolás Dumit Estévez, and Marlon Griffith.

Tengo Sed Writers Workshop/Retreat
9-17 January, 2015
Costa Rica

Application deadline: 29 July, 2014

Tengo Sed (“I am Thirsty”) Writers Workshop/Retreat for writers of all genres.

Retreat details (full details available on flyer)

• Retreat space is 2 hours from San Jose, in a town called Siquirres. This is a space for rest, rejuvenation, sharing ideas, conversations and focusing on writing.
• $1000/per person. Housing, transport, local excursions, food and laundry included.
• Bedrooms and baths will be shared. There is a pool, a river to hike, hammocks, swings, two lounges, on-site cook (for all dietary needs – please just indicate in advance).
• The only commitment is that each writer must be prepared to workshop their writing at least once during the week and participate in group review/ feedback. Workshops will happen evening from Jan 10-16.
• No wifi but laptops, iPads etc can be plugged in – no converters needed for US plugs.
• Application deadline: 29 July (one page letter of intent plus 3 page writing sample). Applications are peer reviewed.
• Once accepted, a $200 non-refundable deposit is due to hold your space. The balance of $800 can be paid into a PayPal account at your leisure until Jan 1, 2015. Travel booking should be done early in order to get a reasonable rate (consider JetBlue, American, and Continental as well as Taca and Copa).
• Only 10 spaces so please apply ASAP . For info and to submit an application: tengosedww2015gmail.com.

New graduate course: The Anthropology of  Freedom
Professor Yarimar Bonilla
Fall 2014
Rutgers University
Department of Anthropology

Open to students from other universities via the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium (see below for more information)

ANTH 604:01
Wednesdays 3:55-6:55pm
RAB Rm. 302
131 George Street | New Brunswick, New Jersey

Although often rallied as “self-evident,” freedom is an ambiguous, amorphous, slippery concept that most often proves difficult to define. Deceptively simple, terms such as freedom often stand in as markers for more complicated arguments about our social world and the ways we deem appropriate to live in it. In this class we will unravel how ideas about freedom (personal, political, economic, religious, etc.) undergird social arguments and projects of societal transformation. We will examine how projects like emancipation, democratization, secularization, decolonization,  nationalism,  neoliberalism,  and civic reconciliation have generated and relied upon particular notions of free subjects, free citizens,  free societies,  free markets,  free will,  freedom of the body,  the freedom of worship,  and the freedom of the mind. We will begin the course with some orienting texts that will frame our course as an anthropology of “embedded concepts.” This will include authors such as Talal Asad, Joan Scott and Michel-Rolph Trouillot. We will then examine foundational texts that have sought to define what freedom can and should mean. This will include authors such as: Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hannah Arendt, Vladimir Lenin, W.E.B. Dubois, Frantz Fanon, and Audre Lorde. Lastly, we will turn towards contemporary writers such as Saidiya Hartman, Uday Mehta, Lauren Berlant, David Scott, Saba Mahmood, Elizabeth Povinelli and others who have examined how notions of freedom underpin societal projects, legal institutions, social practices, political doctrines, and the realm of academic discourse. Over the course of the semester—through both class readings and the development of students’ final projects—we will think carefully about how to construct historically grounded and geographically situated projects of scholarly inquiry that keep in careful tension the relationship between freedom as an object of inquiry, a banner of reform, and a category of social analysis.

Note: The term Anthropology is used broadly here, reading selections will draw from various disciplines and students from other departments are welcome. Students from participating universities may register through the Interuniversity Doctoral Consortium, see http://gsnb.rutgers.edu/sites/gsnb/files/IUDC_brochure_0.pdf

Requirements:
–       Weekly reading consisting of roughly ½ a book or 3 journal articles per session
–       Weekly blog posts to the course site

Assignments:
–       A scholarly book review suitable for publication
–       A “mock” research proposal and final presentation. Proposal will be developed in 4 stages (not necessarily in this order): (1) construction of a conceptual field (2) development of an object of inquiry (3) selection of an object of study (4) calibration of methodological tools and techniques of analysis. Continue reading The Anthropology of  Freedom

FALL 2014

sx salon: a small axe literary platform provides open access to literary discussions, interviews with Caribbean writers, reviews of new publications, and poetry and short prose written by up-and-coming and well-established Caribbean writers. Launched in 2010, sx salon is the online publication of the Small Axe Project, which also publishes the print journal Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Initiated in 1997 as an independent journal of Caribbean studies, Small Axe is currently published by Duke University Press and has a respected reputation amongst Caribbean scholars, writers and visual artists.

sx salon seeks students currently enrolled in a CUNY college majoring in English, Journalism, or Communications Technology for the opportunity to work alongside a journal editor for one semester while earning three (3) college credits.

POSITION TITLE: Editorial Assistant

DUTIES/JOB DESCRIPTION:

• Compose weekly blog announcements related to Caribbean Studies
• Communicate with presses and editorial board members
• Work with editor on grant proposals for journal
• Manage publication agreements and other data for the journal

HOURS: Flexible with a minimum of 10 hours per week, including weekly meetings with the editor.

REQUIREMENTS:

• Developed research abilities
• Proficiency in word processing
• Excellent writing and communication skills
• Facility with internet and email, knowledge of Word Press preferred

ELIGIBILITY:

• GPA: 3.2 and above
• Student Status: Juniors and seniors
• Eligible Majors/Minors: English, Journalism, or Communications Technology

HOW TO APPLY: Applicant must provide a cover letter, a resume or CV with contact information for two references, a short writing sample, and a copy of transcript (unofficial copy accepted). Please send application materials via email to Kelly Baker Josephs ([email protected]) with the subject line “sx salon internship.”

APPLICATION DEADLINE: 15 June 2014

The February issue of sx salon and the March issue of Small Axe are now available.

In issue 15 (February 2014) sx salon: a small axe literary platform presents a discussion of Chinese Caribbean Literature alongside five new book reviews as well as creative work from Cyril Dabydeen, Colin Robinson, Reuel Ben Lewi, and Rajiv Mohabir. The table of contents, with links to articles, is included below.

In issue 43, the print journal Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism presents special sections on Caribbean Historiography and Caribbean Epistemologies as well as a discussion of Deborah A. Thomas’s book, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica. The table of contents is included below. Subscriptions or individual articles are available via Duke University Press. Continue reading sx salon 15 and Small Axe 43