Christopher Cozier: In Development

Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier’s first solo exhibition in New York is currently being held at:

David Krut Projects
526 W. 26th St. #816
New York, NY 10001
212.255.3094
[email protected]
Hours: Tues – Sat, 10am – 6pm

The exhibition runs from January 25 to March 16, 2013, and “consists of mixed-media drawings on paper, recent monotypes and linocuts created at David Krut Print Workshop in Johannesburg, and silkscreen prints made at Axelle Fine Art in Brooklyn.”

On Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 3pm, Cozier will be present for a public conversation with Tumelo Mosaka of the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, IL.

For more information on Christopher Cozier and this exhibit (which includes a participatory online element), please visit the description on the David Krut Projects site.

Unleashing the Black Erotic (CFP)

Unleashing the Black Erotic: Gender and Sexuality—Passion, Power, and Praxis

September 17-21, 2013
The College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center and African American Studies Program
Historic Downtown Charleston, SC

Proposals due May 10, 2013; complete papers due by August 1, 2013

From the CFP:

I believe in the erotic and I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women. I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic and other apparently similar forces. We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. And when I say living I mean it as that force which moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.  
-Audre Lorde Continue reading Unleashing the Black Erotic (CFP)

Vincent Brown: Tacky’s Revolt and the Coromantee Archipelago

Announcement from the Critical Caribbean Studies program @ Rutgers University:

Vincent Brown
Harvard University
Charles Warren Professor of History, Professor of African and
African-American Studies

Monday, February 11th 2013 @ 6:15 PM
Plangere Annex – Murray Hall, Room 302
510 GEORGE STREET, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901-1167.

Tacky’s Revolt and the Coromantee Archipelago: A New Cartography of Slave Revolt

“The Coromantee Wars: An Archipelago of Insurrection” offers a major
reconsideration of the early modern African diaspora by conceiving it
in terms of its military history. Historians of colonial slavery have
been careful to show the impact of events and decisions made in Europe
on patterns of New World development, but with a few notable
exceptions, we have a much weaker understanding of how African social,
political, and military history has shaped the Atlantic world. The
scholarship that exists in this area has focused primarily on cultural
continuities between Africans and African Americans, and much less on
the influence of specific social trends and political events. By
examining the Jamaican slave revolt of 1760 in the context of a series
of insurrections between 1675 and 1775, The Coromantee Wars will show
how events in Africa reverberated through the Atlantic, thereby
joining African, European, and American history within a critical
study of popular revolt and imperial counterinsurgency. Continue reading Vincent Brown: Tacky’s Revolt and the Coromantee Archipelago

The West Indies in the Great War: 1914-1918

MaedaSan Productions – a small London based Production Company currently working on a documentary on the first World War entitled “The West Indies in the Great War: 1914-1918” – is seeking help from scholars and students working in this area/period.

They are particularly interested in information concerning the “West India Regiment” and any Caribbean Soldiers who fought in American and Canadian regiments and/or West Indians en route to Europe to enlist via the States, as well as any other relevant information that may be of interest including: images, stock footage, letters, army records etc.

If you are interested in helping with this project please contact Neigeme Glasgow-Maeda at [email protected]. Please include your area of expertise and availability during the month of March. Please note that interested parties should contact MaedaSan Productions by 21 February 2013.

What’s Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society

The Spring 2013 CLACS (Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies) Research Colloquium at NYU will be on “What’s Left of Cuba? Culture, Politics, and Civil Society”

From the CLACS Colloquium Series site:

This Distinguished Speaker series addresses where Cuba is now in the geopolitical imaginary that once heralded Cuba as the exemplar of radical left projects in Latin America. In recent years, Cuban culture has challenged the projects of the revolution and has recast the cold war frames of embargo, exile, and exceptionalism. A new generation of writers, bloggers, visual and performance artists, and political activists and dissidents have insisted on freedom of expression, the rule of law, the politics of remembering, and the notion of civil society. Both on and off the island, many campaign “for an other Cuba” (Por Otra Cuba), reclaiming the nation and challenging the state. From a burgeoning presence in social media to smaller, poignant acts of reclamation such as political tattoos and graffiti, these social actors are creating spaces of expression and action that open fissures and apertures in the discourse of the revolution and the control of the state. Although they vary in political philosophies, these new voices demand both universality and contingency: an agenda that mixes the politics of human rights, Cuban values, and the unfinished projects of both the republic and the revolution.

Schedule of Upcoming Speakers (times and locations available here):

January 30 – Tomás Fernández Robaina
February 4 – Coco Fusco
February 25 – Jorge Cortiñas
April 1 – Albert Laguna
April 8 – Tony Lopez
April 15 – Alex Vazquez
April 22 – Antonio Jose Ponte
May 6 – Tania Bruguera

Description of the Research Series Colloquium:

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.

More information on CLACS here.

1804CaribVoices

A new online Caribbean publication, 1804CaribVoices has been recently launched by faculty and graduate students from the University of the West Indies-St Augustine (Trinidad and Tobago).  The editorial team is led by Norman Girvan and Alexander Gittens. From the 1804CaribVoices “About Us” page:

Inspired by the freedom struggles of Caribbean people through the centuries, as exemplified by the Haitian Revolution; 1804CaribVoices gives expression to the myriad voices calling for a united and sovereign Caribbean, social justice, responsible governance and sustainable living in our region.  It is initiated as a web forum with participation  from across the Pan-Caribbean space; and will promote information exchange and collaborative activity among organisations and individuals sharing these objectives. Through this means it aims to fertilise the development of a collective Caribbean consciousness that is rooted in our rich history of resistance and creativity; transcending regional differences of language, ethnicity and political status; and supporting the emergence of a united community of Caribbean nations charting its way in the world.

In the face of these developments, and facilitated by the spread of new communication technologies,  civil society organisations all over  the Caribbean are agitating and organising around a variety of social, economic and governance issues. 1804CaribVoices  will provide a platform by which such organisations can spread their message regionally, find areas of commonality of ideas and action, and work towards our collective  empowerment. We invite submissions of commentaries, events, videos, reviews  etc. that are relevant to our objectives. We are starting off as an English-language facility but aim to publish in all four regional languages.

For more information on submission, click here.

Special Issue on Michel-Rolph Trouillot

CALL FOR PAPERS (Full article due 30 March 2013)

The editors of the Journal of Haitian Studies seek essays that reflect on or build upon the work of Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1949-2012). In analyses that combined anthropology, economics, and history, Trouillot’s work addressed the relationship between historicity and power, the epistemology of social sciences, and the historical evolution of Caribbean peoples. Contributors may want to consider the following topics:

Continue reading Special Issue on Michel-Rolph Trouillot

CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Photo Archive

Below is an excerpt from the press release announcing the CUNY Dominican Studies (DSI)’s launch of “First Blacks in the Americas,” a digital photo archive (via Flickr) of images from the colonial Dominican Republic.

The original press release was posted on 17 December 2012 and can be accessed here.

The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute at The City College of New York (CUNY DSI) announced today that it has made accessible on the Internet an extensive collection of photographs of places and monuments from early colonial times of the Dominican Republic.

The searchable collection, titled “First Blacks in the Americas,” contains more than 2,900 photographs, organized in 57 sets, of historic monuments built during the Dominican Republic’s colonial period. These buildings, churches, houses and sites of industrial and artisan production date to when what is today the Dominican nation began to develop as the first colony of the Spanish empire in the Americas.   Continue reading CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Photo Archive

Critical Caribbean Studies: Spring 2013

Below are announcements for Spring 2013 events to be held by Critical Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. For more information about any of these events, contact Donavan Ramon ([email protected]).

 

1) CRITICAL CARIBBEAN STUDIES, THEORY AND THE DISCIPLINES BROWN BAG SERIES:

THE CALENDAR FOR THE SPRING 2013 BROWN BAG SERIES is as follows (unless otherwise noted, all Brown Bag events are at noon in the CCS seminar room in Corwin B, Douglass campus):
February 20: Strategic Meeting of CCS Affiliates @ noon
February 27: Visit @ noon with H. Adlai Murdoch, author of CREOLIZING THE METROPOLE: MIGRANT CARIBBEAN IDENTITIES IN LITERATURE AND FILM (Indiana UP, 2012) — (in conjunction with his lecture at 4:30, 2/27, organized by Nelson Maldonado Torres and the Critical Caribbean Studies, Theory and the Disciplines Cluster);
March 13: Talk @ noon entitled “Archipelagic Colonial Spaces: The Spread of Disciplinary Institutions in Puerto Rico and the US Insular Territories,” by Lanny Thompson, author of IMPERIAL ARCHIPELAGO: REPRESENTATION AND THE RULE IN THE INSULAR TERRITORIES UNDER US DOMINION AFTER 1898 (U of Hawaii Press, 2010) — (in conjunction with his lecture at 4:30, 3/13, in the Pane Room, Alexander Library, organized by Yolanda Martinez San Miguel and the Archipelagic Studies and Creolization Cluster);
March 27: Talk @ noon entitled “Notes Toward Decolonizing ‘Gender’: Conversations in Methodology” by Xhercis Mendez (Binghamton, PhD student) — organized by Yolanda;
April 17: Discussion @ noon of paper titled, “Archipelagic Diaspora, Geographical Form, and Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by ” Brian Russell Roberts, author of ARTISTIC AMBASSADORS: LITERARY AND INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATION OF THE NEW NEGRO ERA (U of Virginia Press, 2013) — (in conjunction with his classroom visit and discussion of “Archipelagic American Studies” at 4:30, 4/15, organized by Michelle Stephens and the Archipelagic Studies and Creolization Cluster);
April 24: Talk @ noon by Jean Beauchamp (University of Paris 8, PhD student, Political Philosophy) — organized by Donavan Ramon and the Graduate Affiliates Group;

 

2) CCS LECTURES:

In addition to the lectures by H. Adlai Murdoch (2/27), Lanny Thompson (3/13) and Brian Russell Roberts (4/ 15):

Monday, February 11th, 6:15 pm, Murray Hall 207, College Campus: Yarimar Bonilla and the Caribbean Colonialities Cluster are trying to bring self-described multi-media historian Vincent Brown, author of THE REAPER’S GARDEN: DEATH AND POWER IN THE WORLD OF ATLANTIC SLAVERY (Harvard UP, 2010), to give a lecture on his use of GSI and other mapping technologies for his work in the archives tracking Caribbean rebellions and his work in the digital world more broadly.

 

3) CCS ONE DAY CONFERENCE: NEW DIRECTIONS IN CARIBBEAN SOUND

Friday, April 26th: Carter Mathes and the Caribbean Aesthetics, Poetics and Politics Cluster, with the help and co–sponsorship of Carlos Fernandez and CLAC, are organizing an intellectual gathering that brings together Caribbean Studies scholars working in the fields of music and sound studies to present their scholarship and engage in a day of conversations regarding the aesthetics and politics of sonic culture, music, and performance within and emanating from the Caribbean archipelago.

 

4) CO-SPONSORED CONFERENCES:

Also put on your calendars these spring conferences on Caribbean material that CCS is helping to sponsor:

i) March 7-9: Writing Through the Visual/ Virtual: Inscribing Language, Literature and Culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean (organized by Renée Larrier (CCS member) & Ousseina Alidou at the Center for African Studies);

ii) March 28-29: Curating Guantanamo (organized by Andy Urban, American Studies).

iii) April 12: Re-visiting Images and identities: Thirty years of Puerto Rican Literature (organized @ Rutgers University–Newark by Yolanda Martinez San Miguel and

A Different Imagination of the Caribbean

A visit by film director and scholar Patricia Mohammed to Rutgers University, New Brunswick
November 27 – 29

Activities include:

Tuesday, November 27
Ruth Dill Johnson Crockett Building Conference Room, 162 Ryders Lane

6:30 p.m
Reception

7:00 p.m.- 9:00 p.m
Film screening and conversation with the Director, Patricia Mohammed. “Windows to the Past”-22 mins and “The Sign of the Loa”-20 mins, both edited by Luke Paddington

Moderator: Anjali Nerlekar (AMESALL) Continue reading A Different Imagination of the Caribbean

Against Recovery?: Slavery, Freedom, and the Archive

Friday, November 30th – Saturday, December 1st
King Juan Carlos Center
New York University
53 Washington Square South

An interdisciplinary conference that aims to foster discussion and debate about how emerging methods and archival practices in the study of slavery and freedom can generate new ideas about black political narratives in the Americas. We bring together scholars whose work asks what happens if we do not look to the archive as merely a space of recovery and vindication, but as one in which we can glimpse the multiple ways our subjects might have fashioned blackness and imagined futures that do not sit easily with more common historical narratives of progress and continuity.

Space is limited. To register, email [email protected].  In your RSVP, please indicate if you will/will not be attending the works-in-progress seminar and/or Friday lunch.

Schedule below. Continue reading Against Recovery?: Slavery, Freedom, and the Archive

The Theory of Haiti with David Scott

Tuesday, November 13
1:30pm

As part of the program of events related to Nottingham Contemporary’s current exhibition, Kafou; Haiti, Art and Vodouleading post-colonial theorist David Scott will present a talk entitled The Theory of Haiti.

In his talk, Scott will explore the political implications of how Haiti’s past is conceived in relation to the present and future through a reconsideration of C. L. R. James’s masterpiece of anti-colonial history, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. A post-lecture discussion, which will open up to responses from the audience, will be led by Christian Høgsbjerg.

The talk will be broadcast via Nottingham Contemporary’s Website.

 

 

 

Connecting Cultures and the Commonwealth, ACLALS Conference

The 16th Triennial ACLALS (Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) Conference
St. Lucia, West Indies,
August 5 –9, 2013

CFP deadline: 15 December 2012

Information direct from CFP below:

“‘The current unbroken/ the circuits kept open’: Connecting Cultures and the Commonwealth”

In “Sometimes in the Middle of the Story,” a poem that revisits the perilous event of the Middle Passage, the eminent Walcott scholar, Edward Baugh, gives primacy to the connecting currents of the “ocean” as a central motif. While the sea is viewed as an archive of history as Nobel Laureate and St. Lucian poet, Derek Walcott has argued, Baugh mobilizes this metaphor to both recognize the traumatic beginning of the colonial encounter in the Caribbean and the rich “refashioning of futures” of cultural connections that the Middle Passage engendered. No doubt the colonial encounter of slavery and indentureship in the Caribbean could have led to cultural enclosures, but in Baugh’s view, “the paths of ocean” represent connecting currents between and beyond the cultures of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Indigenous Caribbean. The sea, in particular, the Atlantic Ocean, was a site of treacherous travel and trade, yet that very sea is a source “connecting us still”. Continue reading Connecting Cultures and the Commonwealth, ACLALS Conference

2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize

The 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is now open for entries.

Deadline for submissions: 4 December 2012

The Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000 – 5000 words). Submissions must be made by the author of the short story.

Regional winners receive £1,000 and the overall winner receives £5,000.

For more details, visit:
http://www.commonwealthwriters.org/prizes/commonwealth-short-story-prize/2013-prize/