Addresses change and continuity in mortuary practices from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries within enslaved and free populations on the former Danish and current US Virgin Island of St. John. St. John's former residents created diverse burial sites for practical and symbolic reasons related to environment, kinship, socio-cultural politics, and religion. Reveals how people historically transformed identities of selves and communities as they perceived and commemorated the dead through meaningful mortuary sites and practices within dynamic local and regional contexts.
The concept of a unified African-Caribbean community or identity is a modern construction in that it emerged in its present guise during the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to this, the identity politics of the ‘black’ people from this region were largely polarized. They were frequently divided along lines of island identities (Jamaica, Barbados, St Kitts etc.). Focusing on the period between 1970 and 1979, this article sketches out the ways in which the black experience within local-level football also contributed to identity change among a particular group of young sportsmen in Leicester.
A literary criticism is presented on the books "Land of the Living," by John Hearne and "Mr. Potter," by Jamaica Kincaid. Particular focus is given to the portrayal of Jewish Holocaust refugees to the Caribbean Area within the aforementioned Caribbean literature, including the relationship between Jews and black Caribbean people.
The author discusses the use of slavery reparations as a strategy for economic development. Particular focus is given to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commission, which was formed in 2013 in order to address the damages caused to Caribbean nations by slavery and racism. The author argues for the creation of a reparations commission in the U.S. The book "Britain's Black Debt" by Hilary Beckles is also discussed.
Explores the routes followed by ideas and practices related to the body emerging in seventeenth-century Caribbean locales like Cartagena de Indias and Havana. Mobile and interconnected Spanish Caribbean ritual practitioners of African descent, using oral tradition, performance, and material culture, functioned as the most important links for the diffusion of ideas about corporeality in the region.
The contemporary backdrop for this essay emphasizes such contexts for future Caribbean studies and particularly for conceiving of Caribbean visual culture. It considers ways the exploration of Caribbean art practices and research of Caribbean visual culture might require reconsideration as global and interconnected structures requiring a transnational and intercultural approach. Insight of contemporary Caribbean visual culture is inextricably linked to circulation of knowledge and production of global culture and visual representation.
The article critiques several poems by African American poet of the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes, including "Ballad of Margie Polite," "Broadcast to the West Indies" and "Good Morning." Hughes' depiction of transnational solidarity between African Americans of Harlem, New York City, New York and blacks of the West Indies, including his use of an imaginary radio broadcast to portray this theme in the poem "Broadcast to the West Indies," is discussed.
The article discusses the transnational aspects of Harlem, New York City, New York, with a particular focus on the borough's cultural relations with the British West Indies during the 1920s and 1930s. An overview of the Caribbean immigrants in Harlem, including working class immigrants, is provided. The role that British Caribbean blacks played in the transatlantic media is discussed.
Suggests that racism was a strategic military liability in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century wars between Britain and France in the Caribbean. The French Revolution provoked slave uprisings on many of the Caribbean islands. Both the British and French underestimated the black rebels' capabilities and routinely executed black prisoners of war rather than ransoming or imprisoning them. These tendencies made Caribbean campaigns longer and bloodier than they might otherwise have been.
The Caribbean island of Carriacou was ceded to the British by the French after the Seven Years’War (1763). Carriacou’s population of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scots, and free people of color, along with their enslaved workers, comprised a distinctive slaveholding society in comparison to that of the old British colonies.
In Apr 2009, shortly after taking office, Pres Barack Obama signaled that he was open to a new dialogue with Cuba. At remarks delivered at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the President said that the US seeks a new beginning with Cuba. Earlier that year, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had welcomed an offer for talks from Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over duties from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in 2006 and subsequently was elected president by the Cuban National Assembly in 2008. Castro reportedly said that he was willing "discuss anything" with the US Government. Here, the US-Cuba policy is discussed. Adapted from the source document.
53 p., Since 1996, Congress has appropriated 205 million dollars to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State (State) to support democracy assistance for Cuba. Because of Cuban government restrictions, conditions in Cuba pose security risks to the implementing partners -- primarily nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) -- and subpartners that provide US assistance. GAO (1) identified current assistance, implementing partners, subpartners, and beneficiaries; (2) reviewed USAID's and State's efforts to implement the program in accordance with US laws and regulations and to address program risks; and (3) examined USAID's and State's monitoring of the use of program funds. Tables, Figures, Appendixes.
Located in the eastern Brazilian Amazon roughly three hours by boat from the open Atlantic, the port city of Belém do Pará has been an important point of convergence for transnational flows of commodities, people, and culture, including a vast array of up-tempo Caribbean dance genres known locally as lambada. Since the late twentieth century, inhabitants of Belém and surrounding areas have sought to make a virtue of their liminal position between the hegemonic centers of southeastern Brazil and the circum-Caribbean. This article shows how musicians, dancers, listeners, and culture brokers draw on the local history of Caribbean cosmopolitan musicality to articulate an alternative Amazonian regional identity, one characterized by connectedness and proximity to their Caribbean neighbors rather than by isolation and provincialism. In so doing, the article contributes to the remapping of the cultural contours of Brazil, the Caribbean, the Amazon, and Latin America.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
171 p, Considers the African Diaspora through the underexplored Afro-Latino experience in the Caribbean and South America. Utilizing both established and emerging approaches such as feminism and Atlantic studies, the authors explore the production of historical and contemporary identities and cultural practices within and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
171 p, This title considers the African Diaspora through the underexplored Afro-Latino experience in the Caribbean and South America. Utilizing both established and emerging approaches such as feminism and Atlantic studies, the authors explore the production of historical and contemporary identities and cultural practices within and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. The collection illustrates how far the fields of Afro-Latino and African Diaspora studies have advanced beyond the Herskovits and Frazier debates of the 1940s.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
254 p, Explores the forms of personhood that developed out of New World plantations, from Georgia and Florida through Jamaica to Haiti and extending into colonial metropoles such as Philadelphia. Allewaert's examination of the writings of naturalists, novelists, and poets; the oral stories of Africans in the diaspora; and Afro-American fetish artifacts shows that persons in American plantation spaces were pulled into a web of environmental stresses, ranging from humidity to the demand for sugar.
Kingston, Jamaica: University Of West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
292 p, Presentation of empirical historical data on Britain’s transatlantic slave economy and society supports the legal claim that chattel slavery as established by the British state and sustained by citizens and governments was understood then as a crime, but political and moral outrage were silenced by the argument that the enslavement of black people was in Britain’s national interest. Slavery was invested in by the royal family, the government, the established church, most elite families, and large public institutions in the private and public sector. Citing the legal principles of unjust and criminal enrichment, the author presents a compelling argument for Britain’s payment of its black debt, a debt that it continues to deny .
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago: Republic Bank Limited
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
344 p, “Republic Bank has been such an integral part of Trinidad and Tobago’s society that if you browse through our book, you will see we have also captured some of this country’s history; such as how the 1990 attempted coup affected our operations.” David Dulal-Whiteway, Managing Director, Republic Bank (Trinidad and Tobago News Day, November 23 2013)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
194 p, Chronicles how the unprecedented demand for sugar radically transformed Western civilization at every level of society. The book details how technologies of human control developed in the African slave trade combined with missionary Christian theology to lay the foundations for the language, literature and cultural dictates of race we know today.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
250 p, Illuminates the dynamic complexity of Caribbean culture and traces its migratory patterns throughout the Americas. Both a memoir and a scholarly study, Caribbean Spaces: Escapes from Twilight Zones explores the multivalent meanings of Caribbean space and community in a cross-cultural and transdisciplinary perspective. From her childhood in Trinidad and Tobago to life and work in communities and universities in Nigeria, Brazil, England, and the United States, Carole Boyce Davies portrays a rich and fluid set of personal experiences.
Browne,David V. C. (Author) and Carter,Henderson (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
228 p, A key text for students pursuing the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination. Each chapter contains document-based questions, short-response questions and suggestions for further reading, in addition to a list of references. There is also a 'things to consider' section which is designed to sharpen students' inquiry skills and encourage reflection on the current state of historical thought and research.
In 1995 and 1996, Verena Stolcke (1995) and Aihwa Ong (1996) were embattled over the legitimacy of the concept of citizenship -- a debate that was preceded by those writing about the complexities of Latino/a as well as Caribbean transnational migration (Basch Glick-Schiller, and Blanc 1994; Sutton and Chaney 1987) and the resultant complexities of hybridity and borderlands (Anzaldua 1987). The debate that followed in Current Anthropology in 1995 propelled the discussion further. It clarified what was at stake in reconceptualizing the classification of national belonging and pushed scholars to contend with power through the ways people resignify meaning and produce new forms of socialities outside of and in relation to the stagecraft.
Explores dynamic changes in network size and composition by examining patterns of older adults' social network change over time, that is: types of movements; the reason for the loss of network members; and the relation of movement and composition in concert. This study is a 6-year follow up of changes in the social networks of U.S.-Born Caucasian, African-American, and Caribbean older adults.
Cummins,Alissandra (Editor), Farmer,Kevin (Editor), and Russell,Roslyn (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Champaign, Illinois: Common Ground
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
275 p, Explores the evolution of Caribbean museums from colonial-era institutions that supported imperialistic goals to today's museums that aim to recover submerged or marginalized histories, assert national identities and celebrate cultural diversity. Museologists from across the region and internationally address the challenges faced by museums in the Caribbean, both historically and in the contemporary setting.
Foote,Nicola (Author) and ÉDiteur Scientifique (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
New York, NY: Routledge
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
433 p, Provides a thorough and up-to-date overview of Caribbean history from the pre-Columbian era to the present. It brings together a range of classic and innovative articles and primary sources, to create an introduction to Caribbean political, economic, social and cultural currents, providing an important first reference point to scholars and students alike.
Fradera,Josep Maria (Editor) and Schmidt-Nowara,Christopher (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
New York: Berghahn Books
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
340 p, African slavery was pervasive in Spain's Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict. The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain's role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
223 p., "This collection is wide-ranging, moving from the Caribbean (Jamaica in particular) to Cambridge, England, and from poetry to sex to discrimination." -Library Journal
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
307 p, Includes Unit 4. "The Caribbean : sea of diversity" and Unit 5. "Articles from the world press. Regional articles ; Mexico ; Central America ; Caribbean."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
85 p., Contends that Caribbean migrants are adopting the foreign culture, sports, food, clothes and behavior at a rapid pace while at the same time losing knowledge of the native environment. Many of the "recent migrants" who are seen on the streets in Brooklyn or elsewhere or in the schools are hardly distinguishable from inner city African Americans suggesting that dominant society influence coupled with the desire to fit in pervade the entire raison d'etre even before the immigrants arrive.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
448 p., Takes case studies from those islands where Caribbean tourism first blossomed – Barbados, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica and Cuba – to demonstrate the post-emancipation complexities and the measures taken to address them. Details the history of various regional entities and the roles they played in the development of the Caribbean tourism industry and goes on to analyze Caribbean tourism performance in the second decade of the 21st century.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
704 p., Comprehensive reference to a range of musical styles, from Bailanta to Bossa Nova and from Salsa to Ska. It includes discussions on cultural, historical and geographic origins; technical musical characteristics; instrumentation and use of voice; typical features of performance and presentation; and, relationships to other genres and sub-genres.
Hume,Yanique (Editor) and Kamugisha,Aaron (Editor)
Format:
Book, Whole
Language:
English; Some texts translated from French and Spanish.
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
623 p., Places classic texts in Caribbean Cultural Thought in dialogue with contemporary interrogations and explorations of regional cultural politics and debates concerning identity and social change; colonialism; diaspora; aesthetics; religion and spirituality; gender and sexuality and nationalisms. The result is a reader that presents a distinctive Caribbean voice that emphasizes the long history of critical writings on culture and its intersection with political work in the Caribbean intellectual tradition from within the academy and beyond.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
517 p., Focuses on the period after the Second World War, when a significant number of Caribbean countries gained their independence, and the character of the region's post-colonial politics had become clear. The survey of political thought in this collection is divided into four sections: theories of the post-colonial state, theorizing post-colonial citizenship, Caribbean regionalism and political culture.
Explores the relationship of family and demographic factors to the frequency of receiving emotional support and the frequency of engaging in negative interactions with family members (i.e., criticism, burden, and being taken advantage of). Overall, no significant differences were found between African Americans and Caribbean Blacks in the frequency of emotional support or negative interaction; several significant correlates (e.g., age, family closeness) were found for both groups.
Lucea,Marguerite B. (Author), Stockman,Jamila K. (Author), Mana-Ay,Margarita (Author), Bertrand,Desiree (Author), Callwood,Gloria B. (Author), Coverston,Catherine R. (Author), Campbell,Doris W. (Author), and Campbell,Jacquelyn C. (Author)
Format:
Journal Article
Publication Date:
May 2013
Published:
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Explores the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) and resource use, considering sociodemographics and aspects of IPV by presenting results from a study conducted with African American and African Caribbean women in Baltimore, Maryland, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Papers presented at a conference held in 2011., 270 p., Illustrates the neglect of emotions and feelings in the historiography of the people of the Bhojpuri areas in India who migrated to the plantation colonies in the Caribbean; analyses assimilation, mainly in the form of Christian conversion of Hindu and Muslim migrants, which resulted in the absence of mandirs and mosques, and the virtual lack of traditional Indian festivals and ceremonies in Belize, Venezuela and St. Lucia; deals with the plurality of ethnic identities, which is in fact the opposite of assimilation; and discusses the social adaptations and reproductions in forms such as Islamic spaces in politics as well as Bollywood movies.
While 20th-century Caribbean literature in French has generated a substantial body of criticism, earlier writings have largely been neglected. This article begins by contextualizing the Creole novel of the 1830s in cultural and historical terms, then proceeds to analyse two novels published by Martinican authors in 1835: Outre-mer by Louis de Maynard de Queilhe and Les Creoles by Jules Levilloux.
Morgan,Gwenda Auteur (Author) and Rushton,Peter (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
London: Blooomsbury
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
309 p., This book places banishment in the early Atlantic world in its legal, political and social context. Contents: Part one. Diverse patterns of banishment in Britain and Ireland --Part two. Continuity and change: British North America and the Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
517 p., Written specifically to satisfy the syllabus requirements of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) and in particular the unit Development and Social change.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
219 p., This hurricane devastated the northwest Bahamas and impacted the economy of the Bahamas for years to follow. This storm occurred during the peak of the sponging era. Many boats were out at sea on sponging trips and were caught at sea during this storm not knowing a massive storm was approaching the Bahamas and many persons perished on-board these ships. The storm was one of the main reasons why the government of the Bahamas switched from Sponging to Tourism as the number one industry of the Bahamas.
Nellis,Eric Guest (Author) and Canadian Historical Association (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Projected Pub Date: 1307
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
About the origins, growth, and consolidation of African slavery in the Americas and race-based slavery's impact on the economic, social, and cultural development of the New World. While the book explores the idea of the African slave as a tool in the formation of new American societies, it also acknowledges the culture, humanity, and importance of the slave as a person and highlights the role of women in slave societies.
Discusses perspectives in Africana feminist thought. While, not an exhaustive review of the entire diaspora, three regions are discussed: Africa, North America, and the Caribbean.
Considers how a taxonomy of conjugality-marriage, common-law marriage, and visiting relationships-emerged as a specialized vocabulary to apprehend and govern the postcolonial Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
306 p., Uncovers the long-forgotten story of the Hankey, a small British ship that circled the Atlantic in 1792 and 1793. From its altruistic beginnings to its disastrous end, describes the ship's fateful impact upon people from West Africa to Philadelphia, Haiti to London. It began with a group of high-minded British colonists who planned to establish a colony free of slavery in West Africa. With the colony failing, the ship set sail for the Caribbean and then North America, carrying, as it turned out, mosquitoes infected with yellow fever. The resulting pandemic as the Hankey traveled from one port to the next was catastrophic.
On Christmas Day 1521, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, the first recorded slave revolt in the Americas occurred. A group of African, likely Wolof, slaves came together with native Indians led by the Taino cacique Enriquillo to assert their independence. Beyond being the first slave revolt in the Americas, it was also one of the most important moments in Colonial American history because it was the first known instance when Africans and Indians united against their Spanish overlords in the Americas.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
294 p, Discusses key individuals (George Padmore, Eric Williams, C.L.R.James among others) and organizations (particularly Labor and liberation movements)in the Anglophone Caribbean world from the perspective of contemporary political and economic Caribbean realities. Particular attention is paid to the Pan-African Movement and its linking of Black Africa and the diasporic Black world of the British West Indies. Colonial Office policies of the period are discussed along with attempts by local and international economic interests during and after both World Wars to control events and thwart labor and independence movements. African American influence in popular political culture and its political and social effect on organizations in the islands is discussed along with key African American newspapers such as The Crisis, Chicago Defender, The Negro Worker, and the Baltimore Afro-American.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
193 p., Studies the writings of Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire to examine how they conceived of and narrated two defining events in the decolonializing of the French Caribbean: the revolution that freed the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1803 and the departmentalization of Martinique and other French colonies in 1946.
Examines the representation of Haiti in the works of Martinican author Édouard Glissant. The relationship between Haiti and Martinique based on Glissant's essay "Le Discours antillais" is tackled. Glissant's focus on the revolution and independence of Haiti and his conception of the island's role in the reorientation of the Caribbean are discussed. Other works by Glissant include poetic collection "Les Indes" and the play "Monsieur Toussaint."
Taylor, Patrick (Editor) and Case, Frederick Ivor (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
2 vols. (1144 p.), Considers religious traditions such as Vodou, Rastafari, Sunni Islam, Sanatan Dharma, Judaism, and the Roman Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist churches. Detailed subentries present topics such as religious rituals, beliefs, practices, specific historical developments, geographical differences, and gender roles within major traditions. Also included are entries that address the religious dimensions of geographical territories that make up the Caribbean.
This study examines the identity categories of gender and race in the Cuban context of the first thirty years of the Revolution and focuses on black and mulata women, in which both categories converge. In this work I analyze the literary discourse of the Afro-Cuban female poets between the 1960s and 1980s and discern the role of self-representation that each of these poets constructs within the framework of "being black" or "mulata" woman. Also, since gender and race are redefined by the dominant power, this project analyzes the political hegemonic discourse of the period in relation to race and gender, and illuminates its role in preserving racial stereotypes as well as the patriarchal normatives of gender.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
245 p., Addressing the transnational relationships of Freemasonry, politics, and culture in the field of Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultures, Writing Secrecy provides insight into Pan-Caribbean, transnational and diasporic formations of these Masonic lodges and their influences on political and cultural discourses in the Americas. Includes "Technologies: Caribbean Knowledges, Imperial Critiques 1860-1900s" and "Urgency and Possibility: Afro-Latin® Identities."
225 p., This dissertation is a cultural history of Barbados since its 1966 independence. As a pivotal point in the Transatlantic Slave Trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, one of Britain's most prized colonies well into the mid 20th century, and, since 1966, one of the most stable postcolonial nation-states in the Western hemisphere, Barbados offers an extremely important and, yet, understudied site of world history. Barbadian identity stands at a crossroads where ideals of British respectability, African cultural retentions, U.S. commodity markets, and global economic flows meet. Focusing on the rise of Barbadian popular music, performance, and visual culture this dissertation demonstrates how the unique history of Barbados has contributed to complex relations of national, gendered, and sexual identities, and how these identities are represented and interpreted on a global stage. This project examines the relation between the global pop culture market, the Barbadian artists within it, and the goals and desires of Barbadian people over the past fifty years, ultimately positing that the popular culture market is a site for postcolonial identity formation.
450 p., Examines how the development of public health, aided by the intervention of the Rockefeller Foundation, intersected with the birth of nationalism in Jamaica between 1918 and 1944. It demonstrates that a modern public health program based in western biomedicine, racial categorization and colonial modes of behavior were vital to claims of fitness for self-rule by Jamaican nationalists. In the late 1930s the demand for greater representation in government was accompanied by the scrutiny of the sexual behaviors and personal hygiene of the Afro-Jamaican masses. The author analyzes how disease and reproduction played a central role in the competing constructions of Afro-Jamaican bodies by colonial elites and ambitious middle class nationalists.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
309 p., Drawing from Haitian Vodou and New Orleanian Voudou and from Cuban and South Floridian Santería, as well as from Afro-Baptist (Caribbean, Geechee, and Bahamian) models of encounters with otherness, this book reemplaces deep-southern texts within the counterclockwise ring-stepping of a long Afro-Atlantic modernity. Includes "Down to the Mire : Travels, Shouts & Fe Chauffe, Balanse, Swing : Saint Domingue Refugees in the Govi of New Orleans."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
300 p., A dynamic convergence of politics, economics and religion, transformed the development trajectories of Europe, the Caribbean, and ultimately the world. Mercantilist trade practices established regional dependence on the metropolitan cores of Western Europe, positioning the Caribbean for chronic vulnerability to transformations associated with the evolution of capitalism in the broader world economy. Perpetuated through restrictive trade and economic policies, manifestations of this dependence and vulnerability have endured in the modern Commonwealth Caribbean despite the achievement of independence for most of the former colonies, and autonomous internal self-governance for the rest.
245 p., In the Humanities, studies on the legacy of enslaved Black women are often split along ethnic, cultural, linguistic and national lines. This dissertation brings together literatures and visual arts from Puerto Rico, Martinique, Suriname, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. representing a myriad of linguistic and cultural traditions that turn to the legacy of the historical Black female body as their myth of creation. The author positions these works under the heading of Plantation Zone Literatures and Visual Arts, a term used to indicate the centrality of Black women's genealogy in 20th-century and 21st-century works from the Black Diaspora. Once a geographic space where Africans and their heirs were forced to labor, the Plantation Zone serves as a metaphorical site where the legacy of the historical Black female body--in multifarious forms of triumph and pain--is celebrated in Black Diasporic literatures.
223 p., This dissertation engages with radical Caribbean theater as a crucial literary archive that is nonetheless underexplored as an expression of political culture and thought. The theoretical grounding of the chapters emerges from the analytically generative thrust of a comment by C. L. R. James in The Black Jacobins: "to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental." While the phrase asserts that race cannot be neglected, it also cautions against ensconcing race as fundamental analytical priority, suggesting a powerfully fluid conceptualization of radical political culture. Argues that radical theater projects in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic share this fluid conceptualization of radical politics with the Trinidadian James's own stage versions of the Haitian Revolution.
473 p., Demonstrates that the figure of the trickster is a key trope for the achievement of agency by the narrators of the three slave narratives Autobiografia de un esclavo, "Routes in North Africa by Abú Bekr es[dotbelow] s[dotbelow]iddik" [sic], and Biografia de un cimarrón. Also shows how both the realization of the trickster's role and the achievement of agency to which such a role is oriented are dependent on the use of the four Afro-Caribbean meta-tropes ndoki, nkisi, nganga, and simbi.
395 p., Inspired by the study of Western historiography and the processes by which silence enters into history in Michel-Rolph Trouillot's seminal work, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, this dissertation demonstrates that fiction can be used both for silencing the past and for rewriting it. This study focuses on seven novels, one short story and two plays published between 1798 to 2007: Adonis ou le Bon Nègre by Jean-Baptiste Picquenard, L'Habitation de Saint-Domingue ou L'Insurrection by Charles de Rémusat, Benito Cereno by Herman Melville, Les Nuits chaudes du Cap-Français by Hugues Rebell, Drums at Dusk by Arna Bontemps, Le Royaume de ce monde (El reino de este mundo ) by Alejo Carpentier, Monsieur Toussaint by Edouard Glissant, and the trilogy of the historical novel (Le SouleÌvement des âmes, Le Maître des carrefours, La Pierre du bâtisseur ) by Madison Smartt Bell.
453 p., Offers an anthropological interpretation of cultural discourses about the body found in literature, visual narratives and archival sources throughout 19th century in Spanish colonial Havana. These discourses show a pressing concern with the "manners" of bodies, the ways they moved, how they occupied space, and how they managed sensations and emotions to negotiate power and prestige in the highly stratified Havana's society. Concerns for the manners of the body became the discursive domain of the rising planter and intellectual elite of Cuban creoles. They often expressed these concerns in normalizing terms such as "good manners," "good taste," and "tone." Argues that these and other highly embodied, interlocking moral, sensory, affective and aesthetic categories such as nobility, respect or " sabor " became focal indexes of the social status of individuals in colonial society.
The defeat of the Dutch armies by the French and the founding of the Batavian Republic in 1795 created confusion in the colonies and on overseas naval vessels about who was in power. This article adds the mutinies on board the Ceres and Medea to the interplay between the Curacao slave revolt of 1795 and the rise of the Curacaoan Patriot movement in 1796. The mariners independently partook in the battle for the political direction of the island and debated which side they wished to be on in the fight between the French Revolution and the British Empire.
480 p., By the end of 1825, 6,000 African Americans had left the United States to settle in the free black Republic of Haiti. After arriving on the island, 200 immigrants formed an enclave in what is now Samaná, Dominican Republic. The Americans in Samaná continued to speak English, remained Protestant (in a country of devout Catholics), and retained American cultural practices for over 150 years. Relying on historical archaeological methods, this dissertation explores the processes of community formation, maintenance, and dissolution, while paying particular attention to intersections of race and nation.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
111 p, Examines the ways Guadeloupean women writers Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Myriam Warner-Vieyra demystify the theme of the return to Africa as opposed to the masculinist version by Negritude male writers from the 1930s to 1960s. Negritude, a cultural and literary movement, drew much of its strength from the idea of a mythical or cultural reconnection with the African past allegorized as a mother figure. In contrast these women writers, of the post-colonial era who are to large extent heirs of Negritude, differ sharply from their male counterparts in their representation of Africa. In their novels, the continent is not represented as a propitious mother figure but a disappointing father figure.
257 p., Shows how Protestant missionaries in the early modern Atlantic World developed a new vision for slavery that integrated Christianity with human bondage. Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries arrived in the Caribbean intending to "convert" enslaved Africans to Christianity, but their actions formed only one part of a dialogue that engaged ideas about family, kinship, sex, and language. Enslaved people perceived these newcomers alternately as advocates, enemies, interlopers, and powerful spiritual practitioners, and they sought to utilize their presence for pragmatic, political, and religious reasons.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
661 p., Focuses on the diffusion of Cuban popular musical styles throughout the Americas as well as the creation of new hybrids in places such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Latin New York. Students, scholars and librarians will find Baila! to be an essential resource on Afro-Latin music and dance, language, literature, aesthetics, and more.
162 p., The Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti are two Caribbean countries that share the same island, Hispaniola , and a tumultuous history. Both countries' historical relationship is ridden with geopolitical conflict stemming from the DR creating an unwelcoming environment for Haitian immigrants. This dissertation investigates how Dominican thinkers play a significant role in creating the intellectual impetus that encourages anti-Haitian sentiment throughout Dominican society in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Examines how Dominican anti-Haitian ideals, as delineated by Dominican nationalist intellectuals, continue to resonate amongst "everyday" Dominicans and within the recently amended 2010 Dominican constitution that denies citizenship to Dominicans of Haitian descent in the aftermath of the earthquake.
321 p., Locates contemporary articulations of afrofeminismo in manifold modes of cultural production including literature, music, visual displays of the body, and digital media. Examines the development of afrofeminismo in relation to colonial sexual violence in sugar-based economies to explain how colonial dynamics inflect ideologies of blanqueamiento/embranquecimento (racial whitening) and pseudo-scientific racial determinism. In this context, the author addresses representations of the mujer negra (black woman) and the mulata (mulatto woman) in Caribbean and Brazilian cultural discourse.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
248 p., Draws attention to a neglected body of récits d'enfance, or childhood memoirs, by contemporary bestselling, prize-winning Francophone Caribbean authors Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Daniel Maximin, Raphaël Confiant and Dany Laferrière, while also offering new readings of texts by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Joseph Zobel, Françoise Ega, Michèle Lacrosil, Maurice Virassamy and Mayotte Capécia.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
213 p., A ollection of stories about the lives of 10 remarkable people in the region. From Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic to Columbia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico, readers will come to know individuals whose lives reflect the history and immense changes underway in these countries.
Hutchinson,George (Editor) and Young,John K. (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
236 p., Always haunted by the commodification of blackness, African American literary production interfaces with the processes of publication and distribution in particularly charged ways. This collection ranges across the history of African American literature, and the authors have much to contribute on such issues as editorial and archival preservation, canonization, and the "packaging" and repackaging of black-authored texts. Includes "More than McKay and Guillén: The Caribbean in Hughes and Bontemps's The Poetry of the Negro (1949)."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
326 p., Part of a series listing materials on the history of North America and the Caribbean from 1492 to 1815. Organized thematically, the book covers, among many other topics, exploration and colonization; maritime history; environment; Native Americans; race, gender, and ethnicity; migration; labor and class; business; families; religion; material culture; science; education; politics; and military affairs.
Lalla,Barbara (Editor), Roberts,Nicole (Editor), Walcott-Hackshaw,Elizabeth (Editor), and Youssef,Valerie (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
287 p., The authors consider the distinctive needs of research in Caribbean literature, language and culture and focus on honing research methods relevant to Caribbean material and with the insights of the Caribbean experience. The essays in the first part, Research Methodology, examine conceptual frames, data collection, and application and analysis of research. The second part details the research process, from proposal to proofreading. Throughout, the authors emphasize a Caribbean approach that is engaged with and aware of a range of existing theories but does not uncritically adopt external frameworks that are inadequate for a rounded Caribbean critical practice.
289 p., Argues that Caribbean writers challenge state notions of democracy and revolution by embracing ideological opacity (forms of political action that are not immediately legible) as a form of radicalism. Writers such as Merle Collins, Dionne Brand, and George Lamming narrated a new revolutionary consciousness using literary form and structure to express créolité (Caribbean cultural hybridity) and represent political resistance. This form of radicalism allows writers to explore political change in terms that are more subtle than discourses of outright revolution. The dissertation draws on the work of theorist Édouard Glissant who uses opacity as a critical term to articulate the right of Caribbean people to create their own forms of knowledge and to refuse Western epistemologies.
500 p., Explains the rise of a culture of racial silence in a time of heightening racial exclusion in Cuba at the turn of the twentieth century. Employing a case study of Cienfuegos, a port city on the south-central coast of the island, the author examines gendered articulations of inequality among Cuban separatists between the outbreak of the war of independence in 1895 and the inauguration of the Cuban republic in 1902. It is argued that Cuban struggles for political power in the wake of the American military intervention (1898) and military occupation (1899-1902) fundamentally transformed separatist visions of citizenship, increasingly restricting its boundaries along racial lines.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
203 p., Argues for grounding the concept of global subaltern resistance in the legacy of the 1966 Tricontinental in which delegates from the liberation movements of 82 nations came together in Havana, Cuba to form an alliance against imperialism. This alliance, called the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL) quickly became the driving force of international political radicalism and the primary engine of its cultural production. Because the Tricontinental represents the extension into the Americas of the anti-imperialist union of Afro-Asian nations begun at the 1955 Bandung Conference, it points to a moment in which a diverse range of radicalist writers and artists in the Americas began interacting with its discourse. By tracing the circulation of the Tricontinental's ideology in its cultural production and in related texts from Third Cinema, Cuban Revolutionary film, the Nuyorican Movement, and writings by Young Lords and Black Power activists, Beyond the Color Curtain outlines how tricontinentalists laid the groundwork for a theory of power and resistance that is resurfacing in the contemporary notion of the Global South.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
306 p., This dissertation concentrates on the relationship between law, literature, and slavery in the Hispanic Caribbean of the Early Modern Period. The analysis is based on two letters and a treatise, Resolución sobre la libertad de los negros y sus originarios, en estado de paganos y después ya cristianos (1681), that were written by Capuchin friar Francisco José de Jaca, while he was serving as a missionary in the Caribbean region. His writings set the stage for a discussion of how Spanish hegemonic legal thinking is challenged and redefined from an alternative transatlantic narrative.
Morgan,Paula (Editor) and Youssef,Valerie (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
198 p., brings together the work of scholars in the field of Caribbean literary and linguistic study. Its genesis was the University of the West Indies 2011 commemorative conference in honor of recently retired professors Bridget Brereton, Barbara Lalla and Ian Robertson. This volume engages the seminal work done by Lalla and Robertson with focus on their contributions to theoretical constructs, original data collection and analysis, and the formation of a Caribbean-based ethos.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
195 p., Examines the concept of queer theory and combines it with the field of diaspora studies. By looking at the queer diasporic narratives in and from the Caribbean, it conducts an inquiry into the workings and underpinnings of both fields. Explores the works of writers such as Shani Mootoo, Jamaica Kincaid and Lawrence Scott.
295 p., In the Bahamas, racism disguises itself under nationalism, education,language, and immigrant status. This study describes the racial dynamics (within African- Diasporic populations) rooted in European colonialism. The Bay Street elite represented European colonialism in the Bahamas as late as the 1970s and transformed the Bahamas into a liberalized economy that relies primarily on tourism. The tourist industry began in the late 1950s, when the Bay Street elite recruited Haitian workers as Cuba denounced tourism at the beginning of the Castro regime. As the profits from the tourist industry declined during the 1970s, Bahamians accused Haitian migrants of being a threat to national security rather than a necessary source of cheap labor. Bahamian print media is the main vehicle for the practices of discrimination against Haitians. This study examines editorials, articles, letters to the editors, and cartoon images from 1959 to 2012 to understand how Bahamians marginalize Haitians and their descendants.
Acc-, After the earthquake, I knew that not much would change in Haiti precisely because of the people's resilience. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I knew that people would soon be going about their business as if nothing had happened. That's what scared me most for the future of Haiti. Soon after they could circulate through the rubbles in Haiti, Haitians were walking down the streets to their neighbors, some street merchants, were trying to sell the little bit they had from their businesses, children were still trying to wipe-clean cars for a few half pennies, "tap-taps" were fishing for people, etc. And that was life as they know it. That's life as those who can afford better think the people deserve and that's why not much is being done to make things closer to equality in Haiti.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
235 p., Using contemporary literary representations of place, this study focuses on works that have participated in the emergence of new conceptions of place and new place-based identities. The analyses draw on research in cultural geography, cognitive science, urban sociology, and globalization studies. Includes chapter on "Evolution in/of the Caribbean Landscape Narrative."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
322 p., Kweh-kweh is an African Guyanese pre-wedding ritual system that emerged among African slaves in Guyana and historically functioned as a medium for music-centered matrimonial instruction for soon-to-be-married couples. The ritual is executed on the eve of a wedding ceremony and encompasses music, dance, proverbial speech, and a plethora of ritual practices that allow participants to chide, praise, and instruct the bride and groom and their nations (relatives, friends, and representatives) on matters of marriage. However, kweh-kweh performances also reveal embedded values of the Guyanese community, such as what it means to be a "real man" or a "proper woman." African Guyanese hold conflicting views on kweh-kweh, but at the onset of a wedding, they devise ways to celebrate kweh-kweh, a "pagan" ritual they also regard "our culture." This work demonstrates how African Guyanese manipulate the kweh-kweh ritual, their religious values, and themselves to articulate the complex of their identities, particularly racial and gendered identities.
Rivarola,Andrés (Editor) and Briceño Ruíz,José (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
273 p., Covering macro-regional and sub-regional outlooks, as well as presenting particular national perspectives concerning regionalist thinking, the contributors consider issues of regionalism where economics, political science and international relations come together. Includes José Briceño Ruíz' "The Caribbean : regional unity in a context of diversity."
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
220 p., This collection uses the metaphor of the global Caribbean to discuss the multiple movements, identities, epistemologies and politics of the Caribbean. Examines the processes of the transnational transport of peoples, languages, and literatures between the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and North America.
Roper,Garnett L. (Editor) and Middleton,J. Richard (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
222 p., Here a group of evangelical Caribbean theologians discuss how the gospel addresses the Caribbean context. They are joined by other theologians from mainline Protestant and Catholic traditions in the Caribbean. The result is an ecumenical dialogue on the diverse ways in which orthodox Christian faith may provide both challenge and hope for the Caribbean context. Half the essays in this volume were originally presented at the Forum on Caribbean Theology held in 2010 at the Jamaica Theological Seminary; the rest were invited especially for this volume.
A critical analysis of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS documentary film series Black in Latin America. The author discusses the conceptualization of blackness in the Dominican Republic.
282 p., Contributes to assessing the effects of neoliberal reforms, and to identifying alternative strategies for better living through globalization, by exploring aspects of the creative destruction wrought upon the population of Jamaica, where government and multinational agencies have pursued a consistent and decades-long policy trajectory following the logic of liberation through market expansion. Focusing on conceptions of ethical behavior as expressed by residents of one central-island farmtown, the dissertation charts a corresponding pattern in locally prevalent guidelines for reconciling individual and collective interests through the practice of freedom.
103 p., The goal of this research is to build on the literature concerning presentation practices of racial and national identity. The research examines presentation practices of race and national identity among Haitian heritage residents of the Dominican Republic. This is accomplished through the investigation of hair styling norms of Haitian-Dominican women living in a batey in the Eastern region of the country. The study analyzes data from ten semi-structured interviews, one follow up focus group, and participant observation in Batey El Prado. The research results show that presentation practices of hair styling and hair management reflect race, social class, and nationality. Hair management practices allow women to manage how others perceive their racial and national identity.
Schwarz-Bart,Simone (Author) and Bray,Barbara (Translator)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
New York: New York Review Books
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Translation of Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1972)., 246 p, A tale of love and wonder, mothers and daughters, spiritual values and the grim legacy of slavery on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Here long-suffering Telumee tells her life story and tells us about the proud line of Lougandor women she continues to draw strength from. Simone Schwarz-Bart's incantatory prose, interwoven with Creole proverbs and lore, appears here in a remarkable translation by Barbara Bray.
Silva,Dorsía Smith (Editor) and Alexander,Simone A. James (Editor)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
272 p, "Mothering has been a recurring theme in the work of many women writers and Caribbean women writers are no exception. This volume comprises of a collection of essays, which examine the multiple definitions and images of mothering and motherhood--from childbirth as the initial site to surrogate, communal, and extended parenthood in the stories of generations of women that include grandmothers, godmothers, sisters and aunts. Writing out of their numerous cultural, political, social, spiritual, and economic worlds, these Caribbean mothers bring needed attention to their endurance of social class, language, cultural chauvinism, physical and psychological exile, racial politics, and colonial sovereignty barriers." --Publisher's description.
398 p., U.S. American literary and creative artists perform the work of developing a discursive response to two critical moments in Haitian history: the Revolution (1791-1804) and the U.S. Marine Occupation (1915 to 1934), inspiring imaginations and imaginary concepts. Revolutionary images of Toussaint Louverture proliferated beyond the boundaries of Haiti illuminating the complicity of colonial powers in maintaining notions of a particularized racial discourse. These productive literatures and art forms actively engage in creating the transnational ideal of diaspora as we understand it today.
271 p., Uses W.E.B. Du Bois' reference to the worlds 'within and without the veil' as the narrative setting for presenting the case of an African-Bahamian urban cemetery in use from the early 18th century to the early 20th century. The author argues that people of African descent lived what Du Bois termed a 'double consciousness.' Thus, the ways in which they shaped and changed this cemetery landscape reflect the complexities of their lives. Since the material expressions of this cemetery landscape represent the cultural perspectives of the affiliated communities so changes in its maintenance constitute archaeologically visible evidence of this process. Evidence in this study includes analysis of human remains; the cultural preference for cemetery space near water; certain trees planted as a living grave site memorial; butchered animal remains as evidence of food offerings; and placement of personal dishes on top of graves.
United Nations Development Programme. Evaluation Office. (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
New York: United Nations Development Programme, Evaluation Office
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
132 p., This evaluation covered the Regional Programme for Latin America and the Caribbean 2008-2013, implemented by the UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, through its Panama Regional Service Centre. It examined the contributions made to development results through the implementation of regional projects, activities and the complementary technical support services provided to country offices and other national or regional partners.
277 p., Afro-Cuban (Santería ) drummers are trained ritual specialists in minority religious communities, initiated through secret rites into homosocial community groups. Historically, women and non-heteronormative men have been excluded from playing consecrated batá drums. This dissertation investigates how drummers construct the sensual and physical essence of musical sound around gender and sexual hierarchies in Afro-Cuban diasporic contexts (Havana, Miami, New York, and New Jersey). Drummers possess a theory of power based on concepts of how the feeling of aché (from Yoruban language, "the power to make things happen") is channeled during performance. Considers colonial-period Afro-Cuban social societies (cabildos ) as a source of possible residual patriarchal authority in the current male drumming cult community.
