Image from Playing White, No. 1 by Kevin Adonis Browne, 2018

6-7 December 2018

University of the West Indies, St. Augustine

Trinidad and Tobago

Deadline for proposals: 15 June 2018

Conference website: caribbeandigitalnyc.net

Beginning in 2014, The Caribbean Digital has sought to create a generative, multidisciplinary space within which to engage critically with the digital as practice and as historicized societal phenomenon, reflecting on the challenges and opportunities presented by the media technologies that evermore intensely reconfigure the social and geo-political contours of the Caribbean and its diasporas. We are thrilled, in the fifth iteration of this gathering, to site these conversations in the physical space of the region via our collaboration with Dr. Kevin Adonis Browne and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.

The continued need for rigorous and ethical engagement with the digital “revolution” is especially immediate among the people of the Caribbean and its diasporas. Information technology remains a significant way in which people frame pressing social problems and political aspirations. Aesthetic media like photography and painting—because they are relatively inexpensive and do not rely on literacy or formal training—are popular among multiple constituencies. Moreover, the Internet is analogous in important ways to the Caribbean itself as dynamic and fluid cultural space: it is generated from disparate places and by disparate peoples; it challenges fundamentally the geographical and physical barriers that disrupt or disallow connection; and it places others and elsewheres in relentless relation. Yet while we celebrate these opportunities for connectedness, we also must make certain that the digital realm undermine and confront rather than re-inscribe forms of silencing and exclusion in the Caribbean.

Following on conversations that animated past events (2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017) we look forward in this fifth public forum to continuing our critical engagement with presentations that explicitly evoke: 

• the transatlantic, collaborative, and/or interdisciplinary possibilities and limitations of digital technologies in the Caribbean;
• metaphorical linkages between the digital and such Caribbean philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic concepts as "submarine unity," the rhizome, Relation, the spiral, repeating islands, creolization, etc.;
• gendered dimensions of the digital in the Caribbean;
• the connection between digital technologies and practices of the Caribbean “folk”;
• specific engagements with digital spaces and/or theories by individual Caribbean artists and intellectuals;
•  the ways in which digital technologies have impacted or shaped understandings of specific Caribbean political phenomena (e.g. sovereignty, reparations, transnationalism, migration, etc.);
• structural means of facilitating broad engagement, communication, and accessibility in the Caribbean digital context (cultivation of multilingual spaces, attentiveness to the material/hardware limitations of various populations);
• the ways the digital has brought welcome bibliographic, philological and curatorial attention to endangered or neglected archives in the region.

Both traditional conference papers and integrally multimedia presentations are welcome. We also welcome virtual synchronous participation by presenters who cannot travel to St. Augustine to attend the event. Selected participants from this forum will be encouraged to submit their work to sx archipelagos––an interactive, born-digital, print-possible, peer-reviewed Small Axe Project publication.

Abstracts of 250 words and a short bio should be sent to Alex Gil, Kaiama L. Glover, and Kelly Baker Josephs (tcd@smallaxe.net) by 15 June 2018. Successful applicants will be notified by 15 July 2018.

David Scott, Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity. Duke Press, 2017. 200 pages.

AFTER Jamaican-born British scholar Stuart Hall died in 2014, I was just beginning to do editorial work at Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism and attended Hall’s memorial lecture, where Small Axe editor David Scott was speaking. On a break, I went to the bathroom and Catherine Hall, a historian who also happens to be Hall’s widow, was tearing up by the sink. I knew it was her, but she did not know me. She does not know me. I had nothing to say to this familiar stranger except, “Do you need a hug?” We hugged awkwardly, and she explained what I already knew: Stuart was her husband. Was. The past tense cut the demanding silence, but I can say this following sentence in the future tense: I know I will learn more in women’s bathrooms than the academy would like for me to admit. Many women already know that the bathroom is a wayside of thought, one context of intellectual friendship.

Though he would not put it this way himself, these moments of intimacy are at the core of Scott’s book, Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity, which was published last year by Duke University Press. In Stuart Hall’s Voice, Scott, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, explores the kind of style Hall embodied, projected, and voiced. This exploration is not only a personal one, limned through Jamaica, but also a reflection on what Scott identifies as “learning in a context of intellectual friendship.” In other words, David and Catherine call him Stuart; I call him Hall. 

Read the full interview here. 

Our March issue features essays by Jennifer Morgan, Heather Vermeulen, Chris Moffatt, Petra Rivera, and Lyndon Gil. Small Axe 55 includes a special section, "Eulogizing Creoleness?: Rereading Éloge de la Créolité, Part II" guest-edited by Celia Britton and Martin Munro, with contributions by Nathalie Batraville, Dominique Chancé, Christina Kullberg, Fred Reno, and Justin Izzo. SX Visualities features from Bahamian photographer, Roland Rose. This issue's book discussion explores new work from Louis Chude-Sokei, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics, with contributions from Tsitsi Jaji, Wayne Marshall, and the author. 

sx salon 27 is now available!

This issue includes, “The Brathwaite Effect,” a special discussion section of interviews with writers about Kamau Brathwaite’s impact on the paths their academic and creative works have taken. The conversations with these five poets and scholars—Vladimir Lucien, John Robert Lee, Anthony Joseph, Pamela Mordecai, and Elaine Savory—began in 2016 and were, in true Brathwaitian style, multiply revisited and revised over the past year. It seems timely that we publish this special section now, just after Brathwaite has been awarded the lifetime achievement 2018 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Along with four interviews we publish a massive Kamau Brathwaite bibliography, with more than 750 entries, which began as a collaborative researchathon in December 2014.

Brathwaite is also present in our review and poetry sections this issue. Wilfredo J. Burgos Matos reviews Brathwaite’s latest collection of poetry, Liviticus, and Gina Athena Ulysse’s poem, “Ogu’s Sword & Brathwaite’s Pen,” honors his legacy. Also included in this issue are a review by Andre Bagoo of Martín Espada’s poetry collection Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, and a review by Nathan H. Dize of Jacques Stephen Alexis’s posthumously published novel, L’étoile absinthe. In Poetry, we offer new work by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and Chris Astwood as well as a translation of Monchoachi’s poetry by Chris Monier.

_________________

Table of Contents

Introduction and Table of Contents—Kelly Baker Josephs

 Reviews

 His Father’s Disciple—Andre Bagoo

Martín Espada, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016); 96 pages; ISBN 978-0393353952 (paperback)

 Taking One Last Breath, Catching One Last Glimpse—Nathan H. Dize

Jacques Stephen Alexis, L’étoile absinthe (Paris: Zulma, 2017) 155 pages; ISBN 978-2843047886 (paperback)

 Offerings to Eternity, Longing of Remembrance—Wilfredo J. Burgos Matos

Kamau Brathwaite, Liviticus (Phillipsburg, St. Martin: House of Nehesi, 2017); 30 pages; ISBN 978-09962243239 (paperback)

 Discussion—The Brathwaite Effect: Poets and Scholars on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite

 “Kamau’s Children”: John Robert Lee and Vladimir Lucien Discuss the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite

 Brathwaitian Engines of Expression: Anthony Joseph on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite—Kelly Baker Josephs

 Poetic Prisms: Pamela Mordecai on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite—Kelly Baker Josephs

 “He Changes Your Imagining”: Elaine Savory on the Influence of Kamau Brathwaite—Kelly Baker Josephs

 The Kamau Brathwaite Bibliography—Kelly Baker Josephs and Teanu Reid

Poetry

Gina Athena Ulysse
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
Monchoachi, translated by Chris Monier
Chris Astwood

The Afro-Latinx Futures series is committed to publishing scholarly monographs and edited collections that center Blackness and Afrolatinidad from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives in the humanities and social sciences. Taking a hemispheric approach, we seek work that foregrounds the lives and contributions of Afro-Latinx peoples across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the diasporic U.S. and Canada. We welcome projects that introduce new historical figures and archival findings, focus on understudied regions and communities, establish innovative interdisciplinary frameworks, and challenge conventional canonical formations. Topics may include but are by no means limited to: afro-indigeneity, migration and exile, marronage/cimarronaje/quilombismo, literature, intellectual history, ethnography, geography, philosophy, performance and visual arts, and gender and sexuality. Above all, by centering Blackness and Afrolatinidad, this series aims to challenge the racial and ethnic frameworks, national imaginaries, and disciplinary constraints that continue to dominate study of the Americas and Caribbean and, more ambitiously, to help shape the future of such fields as Latin American Studies, African American Studies, Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Chicanx Studies, and American Studies.

23 March 2018. Film screening and panel discussion with Patricia Rodney, Robert A. Hill, and Robin "Jerry" Small on the legacy of Walter Rodney. Symposium will be held at the Wright Museum in Detroit, MI.

More information may be found here: https://thewright.org/index.php/explore/events/upcoming-events. 

14 March 2018. Profs. María Fernández aka Mariposa (Black Studies Program), Kaliris Salas-Ramírez (CUNY School of Medicine), and Vanessa K. Valdés (Dept. of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures) spoke on the current state of Puerto Rico after the hurricane. Issues included a historical background to this present moment (how did we get here?), disaster relief efforts, the privatization of schools, and what we can do moving forward. This conversation was inspired by the Puerto Rico Syllabus (puertoricosyllabus.com).

King's Rock | Salt | Stone is a finalist for a Lambda Literary award. "The Lambda Literary Awards identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year and affirm that LGBTQ stories are part of the literature of the world. The ‘Lammys,’ which receive national and international media attention, bring together 600 attendees—including nominees, celebrities, sponsors, and publishing executives—to celebrate excellence in LGBTQ publishing. It is the most prestigious and glamorous LGBTQ literary event in the world.”

This gala awards ceremony will take place at NYU on 4 June 2018.

A full list of the Lambda finalists can be found here:
https://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/lambda-literary-award-finalists/