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.
This study examined skin tone dissatisfaction, measured using a skin tone chart, among a multiethnic sample of British adults. A total of 648 British White individuals, 292 British South Asians, and 260 British African Caribbean participants completed a visual task in which they were asked to indicate their actual and ideal skin tones. They also completed measures of body appreciation, self-esteem, and ethnic identity attachment. Results showed that Asians had a lighter skin tone ideal than White and African Caribbean participants. Conversely, White participants had higher skin tone dissatisfaction (preferring a darker skin tone) than Asian and African Caribbean participants, who preferred a lighter skin tone. Results also showed that skin tone dissatisfaction predicted body appreciation once the effects of participant ethnicity, age, ethnic identity attachment, and self-esteem had been accounted for. Implications of our findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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.
193 p., Kwame Dawes coined the term "reggae aesthetic" to explain the paradigm shift in 1960s-70s Caribbean literature that also dovetailed the rise of reggae music in Jamaica. By exploring the impact of popular music on the social developments in late 1960s and early 1970s Jamaica, Dawes offered a new method of Caribbean literary analysis reminiscent of the extant blues tradition in African American literature--similar to the way that reggae music borrows from the blues--and in so doing, highlighted the artistic and cultural influences that link people of color across the "Black Atlantic." This dissertation builds on Dawes's theory by exploring the history and function of music as an aesthetic form and narrative trope in literature of the Black Atlantic. Blues and reggae in contemporary fiction manifest the oral tradition in African storytelling.
Discusses the relationship between economic conditions and discourses surrounding partner choice in Cuba. Holds that economic changes caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union have necessitated strategies economic survival which differ from previously-held ideals of romantic partnerships. Suggests that anxieties surrounding changes in gender and kinship relations also reflect broader concerns about Cuba's social and economic hierarchies and the future of socialism.
-, Jamaica, in 2007, led the call for the UN to erect a permanent memorial, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said would acknowledge the struggles of the millions of Africans who, over more than three centuries, 'were violently removed from their homelands, ruthlessly abused and robbed of their dignity'. As was the case in 2007, Jamaica took centre stage on Day One of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. The country's permanent representative to the UN and chair of the Permanent Memorial Committee, Ambassador Courtenay Rattray, was the one who announced the Ark of No Return', done by Roger Leon, as the winning design.
Spectacular and devastating were the two words being used in abundance last Saturday night, as fans described the fourth-round knockout victory scored by World Boxing Association (WBA) featherweight champion, Jamaica's Nicholas 'The Axeman' Walters, over Mexico's Alberto Garza at the American Bank Center, in Corpus Christi,Texas.
This essay reflects on Haitian radicalism by looking at the life and the works of novelist Marie Vieux Chauvet (1916–73). Though increasingly a subject of interest for scholars of Haitian women's literature and of Haitian feminism, Chauvet's work is only rarely considered alongside that of more politically visible figures such as Jacques Roumain, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, and René Depestre. Chauvet's exceptionalized status has much to do with her nonparticipation in the gender-bound political culture of her time. This essay seeks to tease out how this pointedly nonaligned woman writer fits into the picture and historiography of Haitian radicalism.
"It's different because there is nothing like it," she said. "Hollywood wants the high drama, the fight, the ridiculous conflicts, shock behavior. We bring none of that to the production.
