Category: Announcements

sx salon 6: Locating Caribbean LGBT Histories

sx salon, issue 6 (August 2011)

Introduction and Table of Contents

In June of this year, the Caribbean IRN, a “resource for people and organizations inside and outside the region whose work focuses on issues related to diverse genders and sexualities in the Caribbean,” held a multimedia event at Brooklyn College to launch the newly formed digital archive of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement. As the queer Caribbean receives more attention in the academic, political, and cultural arenas, those fighting homophobia might be tempted to promote themselves as pioneering progressives (similarly, those fighting homosexuality might view themselves as suddenly under siege). But there is a history of LGBT activism in the Caribbean, a slice of which this digital archive now makes widely available. The archive is hosted by the Digital Library of the Caribbean, itself a noteworthy innovation in archival work.  sx salon 6 brings together essays on the process behind making the collection a reality and its potential for Pan-Caribbean queer communities. Continue reading sx salon 6: Locating Caribbean LGBT Histories

Aesthetic and Cultural Expressions of African-Derived Religions

A New Book Talk Lecture Series

The aesthetics that emerge from the spiritual practices of “African-derived” religions will be the focal point of this fall’s Book Talk Lecture Series. The series will emphasize how such religions—also known as “creolized” religions, “New World African” religions, or “syncretic” religions—have informed and continue to inform aesthetic practices in the Americas, marking especially the urban aesthetics of cultural spaces that have developed along the Hemispheric Atlantic, from communities in New York and New Orleans to cultural spaces in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. This series of talks is possible thanks to major funding from the City College of New York at the City University of New York (CCNY, CUNY), notably the City SEEDS Award, with additional support from the Offices of the President and Provost and President Lisa Staiano-Coico.

“We hope these events will spark a dialogue that engages various epistemologies: the disciplinary systems of theory in the arts, the humanities and the social sciences of the university, as well as such intellectual and embodied systems of knowledge such as Santería, Vodou, Candomblé, and Palo Monte,”

Continue reading Aesthetic and Cultural Expressions of African-Derived Religions

Caribbean Philosophical Association Awards

The Caribbean Philosophical Association is pleased to announce the 2011 recipients of the association’s awards for philosophical literature and contributions to Caribbean thought.

The Nicolás Guillén Award for Philosophical Literature
Junot Díaz, “for his unsettling and imaginative portraits of contemporary life.”
Past recipients of this award include Wilson Harris, Ramabai Espinet, Edwidge Danticat, and Gabriel García Márquez.

The Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award Continue reading Caribbean Philosophical Association Awards

ARC 3 now available

ARC Magazine announces the release of its third volume, which presents a collection of works by contemporary artists practicing in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Featured artists from Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Martin, Santo Domingo, Burkina Faso, and the Bahamas represent a variety of media, including photography, illustration, film, painting, graphic design, poetry, performance, installation and mixed media.

ARC frames its content in sections: SPOTLIGHT highlights emerging artists’ works; 24FPS presents an in-depth look of established and experimental filmmakers; THE GRADIENT offers a dissection of a larger body of specified work; ARTIST ON ARTIST reminisces and heralds the significance of influence and conversation; and COLLECTIONS showcases the portfolios of three artists.

Issue III brings together the work of Bahamian conceptual artist Tavares Strachan, whose work explores the realm of possibilities made viable by imagination and technology. Goldsmith scholar and artist Charles Campbell partners with Strachan to explore his idiosyncratic brand of humanism. Trinidadian filmmaker Yao Ramesar collapses time and space defining his aesthetic strategy Caribbeing, where he decodes a visual dialect in Her Second Coming, locating the Caribbean sun as central to the manifest image. First generation Martiniquan painter Elizabeth Colomba’s representations are an encounter of two tribes; through reconciliation she represents and refigures the black subject into the oeuvre of Western art, correcting and re-entering a lost identity.

Featured artist Lavar Munroe’s illustrations, drawings and digital paintings embrace and translate trauma and pain into surfaces that render complicated staging of colonization and mortality. Dr. Ja A. Jahannes, cultural critic, psychologist and composer, talks with Munroe about his methodology and the deeper powers of spirituality and magical realism. Performance artist Michelle Isava contemplates her space in relation to the internal and external; her honest and provoking attempt to understand her position in society is one of rawness, contempt and ambiguity. Her power shines through her resilience and discomfort. Marcel Pinas’ preservation of Surinamese culture is investigated by Melanie Archer, whose acute understanding of installation and site carries us through a delicate balance decoding Pinas’ mission of protect us; protect our knowledge and protect our culture.

ARC founders Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins will launch Issue 3 of ARC at the inaugural FRESH MILK event in Barbabos on Saturday August 13th 2011 from 5pm til 8pm. More information about the launch and FRESH MILK can be found here.

ARC Magazine is a quarterly, independent visual arts magazine made possible by the subscription and support of its readers. For more information, visit www.arcthemagazine.com

sx salon, issue 5 (June 2011)

Introduction and Table of Contents

This issue of sx salon is dedicated to celebrating Peepal Tree Press for its twenty-five years of publishing. Although neither located in the Caribbean nor dedicated exclusively to publishing Caribbean titles, Peepal Tree, as its name is meant to indicate, has strong roots in the region; the idea of the press grew out of founder Jeremy Poynting’s work in Guyana, and Backdam People, a collection of stories by Guyanese writer Rooplall Monar, was the press’s first publication. In the past quarter century, Peepal Tree has become one of the most trusted presses for Caribbean texts, introducing readers to fresh new voices and now also providing access to previously out-of-print texts in their recently launched Caribbean Modern Classics series, which has, in the past two years, returned to circulation such treasures as Edgar Mittleholzer’s A Morning at the Office, Andrew Salkey’s Escape to Autumn Pavement, and Earl Lovelace’s first novel, While Gods are Falling. These classics reside easily alongside new works in the Peepal Tree catalog, opening space for what Christian Campbell, in the sx salon interview with three young Peepal Tree poets (see the discussion section of this issue), calls an “exciting generational quarrel.” In addition to this interview, the discussion section includes thoughtful essays by Jeremy Poynting and Kwame Dawes (Peepal Tree poetry editor) on the past, present, and future of the press.

Continuing the theme, the reviews in this issue of sx salon feature five recent Peepal Tree publications: collected stories by Anton Nimblett and Geoffrey Philp, new novels by Jan Lowe Shinebourne and Brenda Flanagan, and Christian Campbell’s first collection of poetry. A mix of new and established voices, these few examples indicate the strength of the press’s current offerings.

Rounding out our June issue are poems from Angelique Nixon, Thomas Reiter, and Joanne Hillhouse, as well as short fiction from Lisa Allen-Agostini and from Fabienne Sylvia Josaphat, whose story, “Like Fish, Drowning,” will be continued in our August issue.

We hope you enjoy the June issue of sx salon (table of contents below).

Kelly Baker Josephs

Table of Contents

sx salon, issue 5 (June 2011)—Kelly Baker Josephs

Reviews

Running the Dusk, by Christian Campbell—Stephen Narain
Chinese Women, by Jan Lowe Shinebourne—Anantha Sudhakar
Sections of an Orange, by Anton Nimblett—Natasha Gordon-Chipembere
Allah in the Islands, by Brenda Flanagan—Caryl McFarlane
Dub Wise, by Geoffrey Philp—Jennifer Marshall

Discussion Peepal Tree Press, 25 Years

Publishing in the Cracks—Jeremy Poynting
Finding a Home: Peepal Tree and Caribbean Literature—Kwame Dawes
Peepal Tree Poets Speak: sx salon interviews Tanya Shirley, Ishion Hutchinson and Christian Campbell

Prose

“The Gun”—Lisa Allen-Agostini
“Like Fish, Drowning (Part I)”—Fabienne Sylvia Josaphat

Poetry

Angelique Nixon
Thomas Reiter
Joanne Hillhouse

 

Preserving Our Stories – Caribbean LGBT Histories and Activism

The Digital Archive Collection of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement
Launch & Discussion
21 June 2011 at 6PM
Brooklyn College
Woody Tanger Auditorium in the Library
2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11210

Panelists include:

* Larry Chang (co-founder of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement and Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays – JFLAG)
* Thomas Glave (award-winning author and co-founder of JFLAG)
* Angelique V. Nixon (scholar, writer, community worker, co-chair of the Caribbean IRN Board)
* Rosamond S. King (writer, scholar, artist, co-chairs of the Caribbean IRN Board)

Continue reading Preserving Our Stories – Caribbean LGBT Histories and Activism

Be Black Baby!

Be Black Baby: a House Party
presents:

Edouard Glissant, Inhabit his Name

Curated by Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich & Simone Leigh

Featuring work by: Becca Albee, Vanessa Agard-Jones, Firelei Báez, Kelly Baker Josephs, Jayson Keeling, Kaiama Glover, Hanna Herbertson and Blackgold Dancers, Devin KKenny, Legacy Russell, and Yasmin Spiro.

Friday June 17, 2011
Recess Activities
41 Grand Street, New York, NY
7-9pm performances; 9pm– 12am dance party with DJ Khary Polk

Continue reading Be Black Baby!

ARC Magazine, issue 2

The second issue of ARC Magazine, a Caribbean Art and Culture Magazine, is now available.  Issue 1 of ARC was on sale at our Caribbean Epistemologies Symposium, and issue 2 is similarly gorgeous and well-produced. A preview of the issue is available here.

A description if the contents of ARC 2 from the “Letter from Founders” included in the issue:

Continue reading ARC Magazine, issue 2

sx salon, issue 4 (April 2011)

The new issue of sx salon is now available. (Table of contents below.)

In this issue of sx salon, we publish poetry from two emerging voices, Monica Minott, first-prize winner of the 2009 Small Axe Literary Competition, and Keisha-Gaye Anderson, who was shortlisted in the 2010 competition. Also in “Poetry & Prose” is a peek at a memoir-in-progress from Patricia Powell. We have a similar mix of emerging and established voices in “Interviews,” where Lakshmi Persaud discusses the beginnings of her career and what motivates her to continue, five novels later. We also hear from Anthony Williams, editor of Caribbean Book Blog, who has recently published his first novel.

Also in this issue is our first review of a theatrical performance: Soyica Colbert reviews a production of Derek Walcott’s Ti-Jean and His Brothers staged at Boston University earlier this year. We also publish reviews of two academic monographs—Sonjah Stanley-Niaah’s Dancehall: From Slaveship to Ghetto and Michaeline Crichlow’s Globalization and the Post-Creole Imagination. Rounding out the “Reviews” section is a review of Austin Clarke’s novel, More.

This issue’s “Discussion” section features a discussion of Edwidge Datnticat’s Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, winner in the nonfiction category of the OCM Bocas Prize. J. Michael Dash, Elizabeth Duchanaud, and Martin Munro each offer thoughts in short articles on Danticat’s collection of essays, and Danticat’s response is as open and engaging as the pieces in Create Dangerously.

Continue reading sx salon, issue 4 (April 2011)

Aimé Césaire’s Solar Throat Slashed

Cuba Inside and Out: Book Presentation – Aimé Césaire’s Solar Throat Slashed

Tuesday, May 10, 2011
7:00 p.m.
Americas Society
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY
More information here.

Clayton Eshleman, the foremost translator of Martinican poet Aimé Césaire (1913—2008), and A. James Arnold, the leading editor of Césaire’s French works, read from their translation of the poet’sSoleil cou coupe (Wesleyan University Press). Arnold will discuss the importance of Cuba and Cubans—including Lydia Cabrera and Wifredo Lam—in launching Césaire´s poetic career during WWII.

This program will be in English with bilingual readings. 

In collaboration with Wesleyan University Press, the Cuban Cultural Center of New York, and InterAmericas®.