Reads Carnival-related performances in relationship to the colonial and national histories of the circulation of Indian and black women's bodies in Trinidad and Tobago, asking what is at stake in these occupations of genre, form, and performative presence in the latest global scenes of late capitalism (where image and sound, as cultural productions, are always in circulation beyond the scope of the nation, and their own "original" referents).
This essay analyzes representations and imaginaries of blackness in contemporary Puerto Rico, by focusing on the debates raised by 'Raices'/(Roots) (2001), the Banco Popular video special about traditional Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms of bomba and plena. These debates divided public opinion in Puerto Rico and included members of academia, musicologists, bomba and plena groups, and the San Anton (Ponce) community residents. They refer to the ways Puerto Ricans 'speak the unspoken,' that is, the ways Puerto Ricans talk about race and its intersectionalities on the island and in the diaspora.
The use and abuse of alcohol is prevalent in many nations across the globe, but few studies have examined within-group differences found in people of African descent in the United States, in Africa, and in the Caribbean. A review of current research about alcohol use, abuse, and treatment in people of African descent is presented, including information about risk factors and contributors to alcohol use.
Examines the impact of the Universal Negro Improvement League (UNIA) on the British colony of Bermuda where the majority black population was segregated and disenfranchised while white elites enjoyed total political and economic power. The efforts of UNIA leaders like Marcus Garvey made UNIA a global organization and strongly influenced Caribbean regional politics. Attention is given to the impact of tourism which became Bermuda's primary industry in the 1920s when blacks were evicted from their homes to make room for white resorts.
Discusses representations of the 'Afro-Cuban-occupied house' in Cuban-American autobiographical narratives of a 1990s return to Cuba. A trope in which island Afro-Cubans inhabit houses once owned or lived in by white Cuban-Americans, the Afro-Cuban-occupied house appears repeatedly in Cuban-American literary and film texts during the period. The article argues that the trope, more than another example of 'literary Afro-Cubanness,' discloses Cuban-American whiteness and its constitutive element, privilege, thus inviting Cuban-American literary and cultural studies to engage in conversations along the lines of a critical Latino whiteness studies.
Examines three ‘cosmopolitan’ traditions in the Caribbean. While the first tradition derives from the universalist intellectual tradition of the European Enlightenment, the other two are linked to vernacular, local Caribbean traditions.
This article presents a conceptual and empirical synthesis of ‘critical action learning’ (CAL) and ‘policy learning’ (PL). We pursue this undertaking by reflecting upon a five-year inquiry into an initiative that aimed to provide business support to an action learning set comprising eight African-Caribbean entrepreneurs. CAL and PL share commitments that are riven with tensions, which we explore in our inquiry in relation to three themes that arose during the course of the investigation.
this article charts the connection between gendered concepts of 'whiteness' in Anglo-Caribbean contexts and in metropolitan discourses surrounding British national identity, as articulated in eighteenth-century colonial legislation and official correspondence, popular texts and personal narratives of everyday life. It explores the extent to which the socio-sexual practices of British West Indian whites imperilled the emerging conflation between whiteness and Britishness.
Argues that free African and African-descended women participated in Spain's colonization of the Caribbean to a degree that has not been fully recognized. Regularly described as vecinas (heads of household) and as spouses to Iberian men in key port cities, free women of color played active roles in the formation and maintenance of Spanish Caribbean society during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not as peripheral or marginalized figures, but as non-elite insiders who pursued their own best interests and those of their families and associates.
