Author: Kelly Baker Josephs

Comments on Sylvia Wynter

by Christopher Winks, Comparative Literature, Queens College

Text: “Afterword: Beyond Miranda’s Meanings: Un/silencing the ‘Demonic Ground’ of Caliban’s ‘Woman’” by Sylvia Wynter

It was an excellent decision on Kelly’s part to have us read, study, and discuss representative essays by Wilson Harris and Sylvia Wynter, not only because both writers are part of the generation of the 1950s Caribbean Renaissance that contributed so much to Caribbean intellectual selfhood, and thus independence, but because in their complexity and indeed frequent intractability of access, they exemplify what to my mind Caribbean epistemologies aim at carrying out: a thoroughgoing questioning of dominant modes of knowledge in order to move outside these restrictive paradigms, grounded in the unique historical and experiential deep-structures of invasion, enslavement, colonialism, resistance, revolution, the decolonizing moment,  postcolonial disillusions, and new emancipatory possibilities.  Another immense Caribbean mind, the Cuban poet José Lezama Lima, declared that only the difficult stimulates, and it is precisely in their difficulty, in the vast range of cultural and philosophical reference that animates their quest for what Harris calls “a profoundly compassionate society committed to freedom within a creative scale” and Wynter “the lost motives of our ‘native’ human self-interest, and, increasingly degraded in our planetary environment, of our human self-interest,” that we as readers can ultimately find our surest inspiration and illumination. Continue reading Comments on Sylvia Wynter

“The Pleasure of Writing at Last a Language as One Hears It”

By Jeremy M. Glick, English, Hunter College

Comments on “Order, Disorder, Freedom and the West Indian Writer” by Maryse Conde and “In Praise of Creoleness” (translation of Eloge de la créolité) by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau & Raphaël Confiant

Focusing mainly on Maryse Condé’s piece, I present via propositional logic/further example some brief comments this afternoon to help advance today’s discussion.  I’ll restrict my comments here to signaling: (1) Some of the challenges generated by Condé’s keyword organization of her essay; (2) An example of Pan Africanist print culture (in this specific case radical pamphleteering) referenced in one of her footnotes that connects Newark, NJ, Guinea and the West Indies; (3) The problem of what we might think of as a friendly generative literary patricide that animates both pieces; and (4) The resonances in Black Arts Movement Afro-American literary formations.  Continue reading “The Pleasure of Writing at Last a Language as One Hears It”

Françoise Lionnet

Event at the Graduate Center:

“Paulette and Virginie in the Indian Ocean: Rethinking the Known and the Uncertain”
a talk by Françoise Lionnet

April 2, 2012, 5pm
Rooms 9204-9205
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Françoise Lionnet is Professor of Comparative literature at the University of California at Los Angeles. Her teaching and research interests include: Comparative and Francophone literatures, postcolonial studies, African and African-American studies, autobiography, and race and gender studies. More on Professor Lionnet’s work and publications may be found here.

The event is organized by the French Department.

West Indian Literature Conference, Miami, 2012 – Update

***Extended Deadline: April 5, 2012***

The 31st Annual Meeting of the West Indian Literature Conference will be hosted by the University of Miami, Coral Gables from October 11-13, 2011.  The selected theme continues in the tradition of making critical interventions in debates in the Caribbean and the diaspora. The theme for the conference will be:

Imagined Nations, 50 Years Later:
Reflections on Independence and Federation in the Caribbean

Please see the call for papers below.   Continue reading West Indian Literature Conference, Miami, 2012 – Update

Third Seminar Session

Our next Seminar meeting will be on Friday, March 30, 2:30pm– 4:30pm in Room 9206 at the CUNY Graduate Center. We will be discussing selections from:

The Repeating Island:  The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective by Antonio Benítez-Rojo (selections from Duke University Press 1992 edition)

(These readings will be available here until the end of April and for the full year to registered seminar participants at The Center for the Humanities’ website.)

Our discussants for this session will be:

Maja Horn, Spanish & Latin American Cultures, Barnard College
Kristina Huang, English, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Discovering an Unpublished Eric Williams’ Manuscript

I received the announcement below a bit late (just today) but if you’re interested and free tomorrow there will be a live broadcast of the event.

Details:
“Discovering an Unpublished Eric Williams’ Manuscript: ‘The Blackest Thing in Slavery Was Not the Black Man’”
Dr. Brinsley Samaroo, Professor of History, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
Wednesday, March 7
10am to 12pm Continue reading Discovering an Unpublished Eric Williams’ Manuscript

Second Seminar Meeting: Sylvia Wynter and Wilson Harris

Our next Seminar meeting will be on Friday, March 9, 2:00pm– 4:00pm in Room 9204 at the CUNY Graduate Center. We will be discussing:

“Afterword: ‘Beyond Miranda’s Meanings: Un/silencing the ‘Demonic Ground’ of Caliban’s ‘Woman’” by Sylvia Wynter

“History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas” by Wilson Harris

 (These readings will be available here until the end of February and for the full year to registered seminar participants at The Center for the Humanities’ website.)

Our discussants for these readings will be:

Barbara Webb, English, Hunter College, CUNY
Christopher Winks, Comparative Literature, Queens College, CUNY

Caribbean Brunch and Open House

Open House for Colleges and Universities
Saturday, March 3, 2012
1:00pm – 3:00pm, El Café
El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street

El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem invite college and university faculty to join us for a light brunch and talk with curators about the upcoming exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, opening June 12, 2012. The day will include time to share your suggestions for incorporating the Caribbean exhibition, publication and programs into coursework, and how the museums can support your access to resources.

RSVP by February 29, 2012 at the El Museo del Barrio website Continue reading Caribbean Brunch and Open House

Latin American Independence in the Age of Revolution

Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU (CLACS)
Research Colloquium Series – Spring 2012

From the CLACS website:

Each semester, CLACS hosts a Research Colloquium series which combines a graduate level course with a speaker series. The course is co-taught by faculty of distinct disciplines, bringing together different academic fields of study. The event series invites top scholars from around the world to present current research to the NYU community as well as the general public. These cutting-edge themed colloquium series and conferences are the result of faculty working groups.

The title for the Spring 2012 Colloquium series is “Latin American Independence in the Age of Revolution.” This Distinguished Speaker series offers fresh new perspectives on Latin American independence — the subject of bicentennial commemorations around the region. Leading scholars from Latin America, the U.S., and Europe will tackle crucial questions such as: Was there an Enlightenment culture in the region? Were the causes of independence internal to Latin America or rather derived from the political crisis on the Iberian peninsula? Did nationalism produce or stem from the wars with colonial powers? What roles did subaltern actors play in the revolutions? Were the revolutions “democratic”? What was the role of slavery and anti-slavery?

Some dates have already passed, but the ones remaining at the time of this posting are listed below. Caribbean Epistemologies participant Marcela Echeverri will present on April 9th. Continue reading Latin American Independence in the Age of Revolution

Telling Histories

Mar 19, 2012, 6:30pm
Room C201/202
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue

Telling Histories

Gary Wilder , Laurent Dubois, Greg Grandin

While Haiti’s complex and “cursed” past was often used by journalists to explain its recent and tragic upheaval, these historical retellings frequently did more to malign and undermine the promising cultural and political forces the country was founded on than to illuminate them. How might historians and other academics responsibly and effectively contribute to a global public discourse? Join two distinguished historians – Laurent Dubois the author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History and Greg Grandin, the author of, among many other prize-winning books, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism – for a discussion with anthropologist Gary Wilder(The Graduate Center, CUNY) about the challenges of writing critical histories of nations and empires in the current political climate. This a public program connected to “Caribbean Epistemologies” and “Law, Justice and Global Political Futures.” For further information on these and other Seminars in the Humanities, see http://centerforthehumanities.org/seminars.

Co-sponsored by the Mellon Committee for the Study of Globalization and Social Change

First Spring Seminar Meeting – Creolite and Conde

Our first Seminar meeting for Spring 2012 will be on Friday, February 17, 2:00pm– 4:00pm in Room 9205 at the CUNY Graduate Center. We will be discussing:

“In Praise of Creoleness” (translation of Eloge de la créolité) by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau & Raphaël Confiant
“Order, Disorder, Freedom and the West Indian Writer” by Maryse Conde

(These readings will be available here until the end of February and for the full year to registered seminar participants at The Center for the Humanities’ website.)

Our discussants for these readings will be:

  • Yarimar Bonilla, Anthropology and Caribbean Studies, Rutgers University
  • Jeremy M. Glick, English, Hunter College, CUNY

Eric Walrond, the Harlem Renaissance and the Caribbean Diaspora

Caribbean Epistemologies Seminar participant James Davis will discuss his forthcoming book, Eric Walrond, The Harlem Renaissance, and the Caribbean Diaspora at the Graduate Center next week as part of an event sponsored by the  Leon Levy Center for Biography.

Event Details:

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 6:30pm
Skylight Room on the 9th Floor at the CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue at 34th St, New York, NY

Please RSVP to Michael Gately, Program Director: [email protected] Continue reading Eric Walrond, the Harlem Renaissance and the Caribbean Diaspora

The Power of Caribbean Poetry – Word and Sound

A conference on Caribbean Poetry will be held at Homerton College and the Faculty of Education from 20–22 September 2012.

Speakers and performers include John Agard, Beverley Bryan, Kei Miller, Mervyn Morris, Grace Nichols, Velma Pollard, Olive Senior, Dorothea Smartt.

Topics include:

  • Caribbean poetry and the word
  • Origins and histories of Caribbean poetry
  • Critical engagement with the work of individual poets e.g. the work of
  • Derek Walcott / Kamau Brathwaite / Lorna Goodison…
  • Re-reading Caribbean poetry
  • Caribbean poetry and music
  • Ecocriticism and Caribbean poetry
  • Caribbean landscapes
  • Poetry as emancipation
  • Caribbean British poetry
  • Approaches to learning and teaching Caribbean poetry
  • Migration and location in Caribbean poetry
  • Gender in Caribbean poetry
  • Caribbean poetry and postcolonial theory
  • Caribbean poetry and the curriculum

For more details, see the CFP below and the Caribbean Poetry Project website.

CPP – The Power of Caribbean Poetry

***Please note, the deadline has been extended to March 2012.