Digital Conference
Rethinking Postcolonial Europe: Moving Identities, Changing Subjectivities
February 10-12, 2021
International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) Justus-Liebig-University Giessen
Full CfP: CfP_rethinkingEurope
In this sense, the Caribbean and its diasporas, seen as social spaces, constitute an especially promising field of study, for their traditionally complex forms of geographic mobility, their strong linguistic, cultural, and social fragmentation, their intense demarcations along ethnic and social lines and their profound processes of transculturation. This constellation creates complex dynamics, closely intertwined with cultural and social questions, which manifest themselves in the educational system and its policies. Our conference is thus engaged with the following questions: How do Caribbean educational politics facilitate mobility or, on the contrary, contribute to the drawing of boundaries? How do internal and global processes of circulation (of people, objects, and knowledge) shape educational policies? Unlike in empirical educational research, whose main goal is the generation of actionable knowledge for further development of educational systems, this conference focuses on embedding educational processes in the cultural, linguistic and social dynamics of Caribbean societies, while placing a particular focus on their historical development.
For this purpose, educational practices and discourses will be analyzed from a transdisciplinary perspective, which will take into account the delimitations and demarcations of boundaries instigated by educational politics and their resulting (dis)continuities. The following three fields of observation will be given special emphasis:
1. Mobilities & Immobilities: How is access to education organized in the Caribbean and its diasporas? What factors enable or prevent the permeability of the educational system and social mobility? What educational biographies are typical and by what modes and pathways does knowledge circulate within and through the educational system?
2. Identities & Demarcations: How does the construction of identity interact with educational processes in Caribbean societies (and their diasporas)? What kind of narratives of identification and demarcation are propagated in official and unofficial educational practices? How do educational discourses and practices contribute to hybridization and reformulation of individual and collective identities?
3. Institutions & Authorities: Which educational processes control the differentiation of local, regional or transregional social norms in the Caribbean and its diasporas? How do linguistic and cultural standards interact with non-standard practices and expressions? How does cultural and artistic canonization work, and how do they relate to official educational canons?
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Silke Jansen, Erlangen
Prof. Dr. Miriam Lay Brander, Eichstätt
Johannes Bohle, Flensburg
Dr. Anne Brüske, Heidelberg
Natascha Rempel, Hannover
July 01-03, 2020, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld University
Various migration movements have led to new complex transnational and diaspora networks between the Caribbean and Canada, the Caribbean and the US, and between Canada and the US. This is reflected, for instance, in the vast range of im/migration literatures and other cultural products of the past decades. The latter part of the 20th and the 21st century, in particular, have witnessed a tremendous amount of cultural activity by Caribbean migrants/diasporas in North America (here: Anglo-Canada and the US). Therefore, Caribbean/Canadian and Caribbean/US cultural products can and should be read both together and separately, as rich texts that connect subjectivities with histories and cultures in their struggle to (re-)invent and (re-)negotiate home and belonging in a globalizing present. Home, as we understand it, is never unidimensional or closed but instead relational and multi-scalar, open yet (temporarily) (trans-)locatable, both material and imaginative. Thus, home as an idea, a concept, a construct, a place, is multiple, complex, and versatile – home becomes homes.
Further, conceptualizing home on a meta-level from an inter-American perspective is a promising approach to shed light on the shifting geopolitical imaginaries of the Caribbean, Canada, and the US. In this regard, areas of conflict concerning real and imagined pasts and projected visions of the future, as well as convergent and divergent national contexts, transnational, and global relations take center stage.
With this conference, we hope to provide a platform for interdisciplinary dialogues between scholars, artists, and activists who think critically about questions of home and belonging. We wish to reflect on the ways in which literatures and other cultural products (re-)negotiate, challenge, and (de-)construct (established or normative) notions of home at the interstices of the historical, political, cultural, social, and geographical contexts of the Caribbean, Canada, and the US, as well as on the usefulness and (re-)conceptualization of home from a critical/theoretical angle not only in Cultural and Literary Studies but also in such fields as Critical Geopolitics, Sociology, and Geography, among others.
The conference, to be held at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University from July 01 to July 03, 2020, is committed to the conceptualization of a hemispheric perspective of American (diasporic) movements and cultures, a perspective which both problematizes and ventures beyond a reductive North-South divide. In this dialogue of multiple relations, which, in the case of our research project, starts but does not end with literary examples of experience, we hope to be able to reflect and formulate new ideas about home, as public and private place-making processes, as well as about geopolitical imaginaries and their role in home-making processes from inter-American perspectives.
As we strive to demarcate rigid separations between academic research and cultural (and political) activity, we accept proposals in English and Spanish for papers in the traditional panel format (20 minutes talk plus discussion) as well as short performances (e.g. poetry, music).The participation of MA and doctoral students is strongly encouraged. Please note that a selection of papers is set to subsequently appear in a special edition of the online journal fiar (forum for inter-American research).
Possible topics/fields of inquiry include but are not limited to:
Those interested in participating, should submit a 250-word abstract proposal for a paper or performance by July 30, 2019.
Please understand that the organizers are unable to offer financial support and participants are responsible for their own expenses, including travel and accommodation.
Please email your abstracts and any inquiries concerning the event to the following: Wilfried Raussert (wilfried.raussert@uni-bielefeld.de) and Miriam Brandel (miriam.brandel@uni-bielefeld.de).
Announcing the CRI’s Twelfth conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies on Feb. 14-16, 2019.
Please see details below/attached. If interested in participating, submit your proposals for panels or papers by October 31, 2018.
For more information visit our website (https://cri.fiu.edu) or write cri.fiu.conference@gmail.com. We hope you can join us!
Call for Papers
“Rethinking Europe from the Caribbean: Entanglements and Legacies”
12-15 April, 2018
Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, Germany
The multiple ties that bind the Caribbean and Europe are the main focus of the conference marking 30 years since the Society for Caribbean Research (Socare) was founded. The Caribbean was the first region to be colonized by European powers in the 16th century and the last one to be (incompletely) decolonized in the 20th century. It received more than one-third of all Africans trafficked in the European trade in enslaved people between the 16th and 19th centuries as well as significant numbers of indentured and contracted European laborers during much of the same period, followed by indentureship and contract labor from Asia. The region was devastated by the genocide of indigenous populations at the hands of European colonists and experienced some of the most intense economic exploitation among Europe’s colonies. After World War II, European states compensated for their domestic labor shortages by recruiting large numbers of workers from their Caribbean colonies. This also prompted changes in the citizenship policies that European colonial powers directed at these migrants.
Today, more than one-third of Europe’s remaining colonial possessions are located in the Caribbean, and the CARICOM Reparations Commission, established in 2013, states that it “finds European colonial rule as a persistent part of Caribbean life.”[1] Nevertheless, historiography, geography, as well as social, literary, and cultural theories tend to conceive of Europe and the Caribbean as separate, even antithetical regions. For social sciences focused on modern industrial societies, the Caribbean’s legacy of enslavement made it appear as paradigmatically backward, inefficient, and underdeveloped. As such, it constituted the opposite of the notion of the free, modern, and efficient wage-work which Europe claimed to have pioneered. Having been shaped by an influx of African, European and Asian populations, the Caribbean has come to represent racial and ethnic diversity par excellence, as also evidenced in Caribbean thinkers’ theorizations of transculturation, hybridity, and creolization. In contrast, Europe – following centuries of mass emigration, nation-building processes, expulsions, and waves of ethnic cleansing – stood for high levels of ethnic homogenization. The reversal of the migration pattern since the mid-20th century in the direction of Europe, among other regions, triggered large-scale debates on race on the continent and increasingly framed immigration as a threat to European societies. In the context of literary studies, the canonical status of European ‘national’ literatures still tends to be juxtaposed to ‘postcolonial’ Caribbean literary production. Notions of postcoloniality similarly focus mainly on the former colonies, while only recently debates across Europe have begun to address the question of Europe’s postcoloniality.
In the wake of the humanitarian crises following the most recent hurricanes and earthquakes in the Greater Caribbean, limited and discrepant disaster relief efforts have again raised questions about political and economic relations between Western powers and the Caribbean. Facing public health disasters and waves of out-migration, island economies are further challenged through current citizenship regimes, fragmented political accountability and exploitative economic arrangements, which highlight the ambivalent geopolitical status of many Caribbean territories vis-à-vis European and U.S.-American interests.
Against the backdrop of these and related aspects, the conference focuses on the legacies and continuities of European colonialism in the region and on transregional entanglements between the Caribbean and Europe. Examining languages, (post)colonial histories, socioeconomic trajectories, and aesthetic practices in the Caribbean in their relations to Europe also provides a basis for rethinking Europe from the Caribbean. The conference aims to challenge the hypervisibility of Western Europe by highlighting Caribbean entanglements with othered and racialized Southern and Eastern Europes, as well as through the frequently ‘forgotten Europes’ still claimed as overseas territories and regions in the Greater Caribbean. What can Caribbean perspectives contribute to a different and more nuanced understanding of Europe(s) today?
We invite contributions from different research fields including, but not limited to, literary and cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, history, geography, and political science. Inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives are particularly welcome, as are poster presentations of PhD projects. We welcome contributions in English, French or Spanish and encourage handouts or presentation material in one of the languages other than that of the oral presentation. Possible topics include:
Proposals for papers or posters (please state your choice) should include the author’s name and affiliation, presentation title, an abstract of around 300 words, as well as a short paragraph with biographical information.
Please submit proposals via e-mail to both conveners by 15 November 2017
Manuela Boatcă: manuela.boatca@soziologie.uni-freiburg.de
Annika McPherson: annika.mcpherson@philhist.uni-augsburg.de
[1] http://caricomreparations.org/caricom/caricoms-10-point-reparation-plan/
Indigenous and African Diasporic communities practice spirit-based religious traditions throughout the Americas. The core of these traditions is indigenous or African but they also absorb elements of colonial traditions, especially from Catholic, Protestant and Freemason sources. Indigenous and African Diasporic traditions have also had contact with one another. African Diasporic spirit-based religious traditions include Vodou, Santería, Candomblé, Palo Monte, Kumina and others, and are practiced in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the entire Caribbean, the United States, Canada and beyond. Since pre-Columbian times, indigenous communities have practiced spirit-based religious traditions (sometimes called “Shamanism” or “Shamanic practices”) throughout the Americas. Those communities include, for example, the Mapuche, Matsigenka, Avá-Chiripá, Inuit, Cubeo, Warao, Baniwa and others in countries like Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, the United States, Canada and others. Still struggling against the effects of colonialism, indigenous and African Diaspora spirit-based religious traditions stand today as major world religions. However, in spite of their importance for humanity, not enough is known about them, their interactions, and their local and global impacts.
The language of this volume is English. Abstracts plus preliminary bibliographies are being accepted until September 1, 2017. The Maximum length of the abstract is 450 words (1 page, .12 font, single-spaced) and the maximum length of the bibliography is 1 page (.12 font, single-spaced). A response about the abstract will be sent no later than one month after reception. If your abstract is accepted, the deadline for the submission of the final draft of your 5,000-8,000-word chapter is January 31, 2018.
Send ideas, abstracts and bibliographies attached in an email to Hebblethwaite and Jansen:
Full CfP: CFP African Diasporic and Indigenous American Religious Traditions
Venue: University of Salzburg
Organizers: Christopher F. Laferl, Ralph Poole, Philipp Seidel
Date: 23 – 25 November 2017
The Caribbean is distinguished for its great political and cultural diversity, which not only is discernable by various languages, but also by the multiplicity of religions, social norms and values, and legal systems. Although Latin America continues to be regarded as a Catholic continent, the situation in the Caribbean is more complex. On the one hand, the Catholic Church competes against traditional Protestant churches, on the other hand both are distinct from (syncretistic) Afro Caribbean religions as well as increasingly from evangelical Pentecostal churches. This religious and cultural mixture poses serious challenges to the state, the society, the legal system, but also to the arts and literature. The various types of governmental and legal systems largely date back to differing traditions of (previous) colonial powers. While the (former) British territories rely on the Anglo-Saxon Common Law, the other territories follow continental European legal systems. And yet, these orders only make up the outer framework within which the people of a state move and act. How individuals and/or various collectives actually live together and how their attitudes and behavior towards the state and other institutions are shaped, all this underlies a continuous process of negotiation that can take on multifarious forms.
Against this backdrop the focus of the junior scholar conference of the Society of Caribbean Research (Socare) lies on questions concerning governance and rights. Not only the (in)stable, democratic or authoritarian governments play an important role, but also the specific means of governing. Besides the actual political players, who justify their position and actions and take on responsibility, economic, social and religious institutions also have a great importance in matters of shaping the communal lives of their societies, especially when politics cannot offer effective solutions or when the success of their implementations remains questionable. Furthermore, what is at stake is the question in how far the principle of non-discrimination, which since the Enlightenment has been reclaimed for more and more areas of identity also on a supranational level, is being realized by the single states and in social practice. Especially with regard to observing the various non-discriminatory regulations there are still (or again?) great differences concerning gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, not least since several categories of identity are often in (open) conflict with one another.
The following questions may serve as framework for the conference’s topic:
We invite junior scholars from all areas and disciplines of Caribbean Studies to participate. Interdisciplinary contributions from legal and theological sciences are also most welcome. The contributions should not exceed the limit of 20 minutes.
Those interested should send a half-page abstract in either German, English, Spanish, or French along with a short bio to Philipp Seidel (philipp.seidel@sbg.ac.at) by April 30, 2017. Please state the preferred language for your talk and what other languages you feel comfortable with. The conference’s languages will be chosen according to the selected contributions. The contributors will be informed in time.
Venue: University of Salzburg
Organizers: Christopher F. Laferl, Ralph Poole, Philipp Seidel
Date: 23 – 25 November 2017
The Caribbean is distinguished for its great political and cultural diversity, which not only is discernable by various languages, but also by the multiplicity of religions, social norms and values, and legal systems. Although Latin America continues to be regarded as a Catholic continent, the situation in the Caribbean is more complex. On the one hand, the Catholic Church competes against traditional Protestant churches, on the other hand both are distinct from (syncretistic) Afro Caribbean religions as well as increasingly from evangelical Pentecostal churches. This religious and cultural mixture poses serious challenges to the state, the society, the legal system, but also to the arts and literature. The various types of governmental and legal systems largely date back to differing traditions of (previous) colonial powers. While the (former) British territories rely on the Anglo-Saxon Common Law, the other territories follow continental European legal systems. And yet, these orders only make up the outer framework within which the people of a state move and act. How individuals and/or various collectives actually live together and how their attitudes and behavior towards the state and other institutions are shaped, all this underlies a continuous process of negotiation that can take on multifarious forms.
Against this backdrop the focus of the junior scholar conference of the Society of Caribbean Research (Socare) lies on questions concerning governance and rights. Not only the (in)stable, democratic or authoritarian governments play an important role, but also the specific means of governing. Besides the actual political players, who justify their position and actions and take on responsibility, economic, social and religious institutions also have a great importance in matters of shaping the communal lives of their societies, especially when politics cannot offer effective solutions or when the success of their implementations remains questionable. Furthermore, what is at stake is the question in how far the principle of non-discrimination, which since the Enlightenment has been reclaimed for more and more areas of identity also on a supranational level, is being realized by the single states and in social practice. Especially with regard to observing the various non-discriminatory regulations there are still (or again?) great differences concerning gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, not least since several categories of identity are often in (open) conflict with one another.
The following questions may serve as framework for the conference’s topic:
We invite junior scholars from all areas and disciplines of Caribbean Studies to participate. Interdisciplinary contributions from legal and theological sciences are also most welcome. The contributions should not exceed the limit of 20 minutes.
Those interested should send a half-page abstract in either German, English, Spanish, or French along with a short bio to Philipp Seidel (philipp.seidel@sbg.ac.at) by March 15, 2017. Please state the preferred language for your talk and what other languages you feel comfortable with. The conference’s languages will be chosen according to the selected contributions. The contributors will be informed in time.
La Casa de las Américas, a través de su Centro de Estudios del Caribe, lo invita a participar en el Coloquio Internacional La Diversidad Cultural en el Caribe, a celebrarse entre el 22 y el 26 mayo de 2017. En su sexta edición, el evento se propone abordar las diversas aristas que genera el tema “Memoria y conflictos de frontera”.
Casa de las Américas, through its Centro de Estudios del Caribe, invites you to participate in the International Colloquium on Cultural Diversity in the Caribbean, to be held between the 22 and the 26 of May 2017. In its sixth edition, the event will address the various aspects generated by the theme “Memory and border conflicts”.
La Casa de las Américas, à travers son Centro de Estudios del Caribe, vous invite à participer au Colloque International La Diversité Culturelle à la Caraïbe qui se tiendra du 22 au 26 mai 2017. Pour sa sixième édition, l’événement propose d’aborder les différents angles du thème “Mémoire et conflits de frontiers”.
Deadline: March 15, 2017
Contact: seccaribe@casa.cult.cu
Full CfP: http://call-for-entries-cultural-diversity-memories
full CfP including french and spanish version: cfp_summer-school_carib_fr_esp_eng-1
Since the initial phase of accelerated globalisation, the Caribbean has been affected by the clash of Amerindian, European and African cultures. Added to these later on were Asian and North American cultures, making the Caribbean a unique place in the study of hybridisation, creolisation and transculturation processes that have arisen since the end of the 20th and beginning of 21st centuries. Countries in the Caribbean, and their respective societies, are at the heart of complex transnational networks that tie together a multitude of inter- and extra-Caribbean spaces within a constant circulation of people, cultural artefacts and knowledge. This flux has intensified with the radical changes that have come about in the fields of technology, economics, politics, and languages. The expansion of the world wide and digital revolution have once again highlighted how the Caribbean is interwoven with other parts of the world, creating at the same time new possibilities of connection between the Caribbean and its other diasporas.
Our summer school will attempt to analyse effect of globalisation processes on the current field of Caribbean literature.
Firstly, we will look at the position occupied by Caribbean literature and at the various strategies used to promote it on the international literature market, bearing in mind all the while the sociological and economic factors that come along with its global distribution.
A second line of research that the summer school will attempt to develop will be that of the transformation and re-codification of poetic and literary genres in the current phase of accelerated globalisation.
A third line of research will focus specifically on new means of communication. It will look at how digital tools have expanded or transformed the context of literature within the Caribbean context, offering up new possibilities for interaction, artistic creation and archiving of knowledge.
Finally, we will look at the complex and ambivalent relationships that Caribbean writers maintain with mass culture as a place for representing the various cultures of the Caribbean.
The interdisciplinary summer school Caribbean literature and globalisation is organised by the Literature Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon (ENS) and the Literature Faculty of the University of Constance. Academics and guest artists from the Caribbean, Germany and the United States will participate in the summer school.
Speakers:
Kelly Baker Josephs (York College, CUNY/ Williams College)
Gesine Müller (Université de Cologne)
Catalina Quesada Gómez (University of Miami)
This summer university will include content from Literary Studies and Cultural & Sociological Studies faculties, and will be aimed at Master’s as well as doctorate students from the disciplines in question. Participants will have the opportunity to improve and extend their individual knowledge of Caribbean Studies and to discuss their personal plans (for example, their university work or theses).
Participants of the summer school will receive a certificate of attendance. Furthermore, master’s students from ENS Lyon and those from the University of Constance will be able to get their participation in the summer school approved as a research conference for 6 ECTS/5 ECTS.
Participants will have to prove that they have a good level in English and French or Castilian, as well as good university marks, which should be proven by a transcript of their master’s degree in one of the aforementioned disciplines. Alternatively, for those who have just begun a doctorate, they can submit an acceptance letter confirming their status as a doctorate student.
Potential students should send a covering letter in English, French or Castilian (about 2 pages long, Word or PDF, 1.5 line spacing, font size 12) detailing the aforementioned skills as well as their personal motivation and how this fits in with the specialisms offered by the summer university. The final date for applications is 28 February 2017 and these should be sent to miriam.lay-brander@uni-konstanz.de and cyril.vettorato@ens-lyon.fr .