From Chains to Bonds


Book Description

A collection of 38 papers from the Ouidah Conference held in September 1994 in Ouidah, Benin as the launching conference for UNESCO's international Slave Route Project.




The Contemporary Caribbean


Book Description

This text focuses on the contemporary economic, social, geographical, environmental and political realities of the Caribbean region. Historical aspects of the Caribbean, such as slavery, the plantation system and plantocracy are explored in order to explain the contemporary nature of, and challenges faced by, the Caribbean. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with: the foundations of the Caribbean, rural and urban bases of the contemporary Caribbean, and global restructuring and the Caribbean: industry, tourism and politics.




Creolization as Cultural Creativity


Book Description

Global in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, Creolization as Cultural Creativity explores the expressive forms and performances that come into being when cultures encounter one another. Creolization is presented as a powerful marker of identity in the postcolonial creole societies of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southwest Indian Ocean region, as well as a universal process that can occur anywhere cultures come into contact. An extraordinary number of cultures from Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, the southern United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Réunion, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Suriname, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone are discussed in these essays. Drawing from the disciplines of folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, history, and material culture studies, essayists address theoretical dimensions of creolization and present in-depth field studies. Topics include adaptations of the Gombe drum over the course of its migration from Jamaica to West Africa; uses of “ritual piracy” involved in the appropriation of Catholic symbols by Puerto Rican brujos; the subversion of official culture and authority through playful and combative use of “creole talk” in Argentine literature and verbal arts; the mislabeling and trivialization (“toy blindness”) of objects appropriated by African Americans in the American South; the strategic use of creole techniques among storytellers within the islands of the Indian Ocean; and the creolized character of New Orleans and its music. In the introductory essay the editors address both local and universal dimensions of creolization and argue for the centrality of its expressive manifestations for creolization scholarship.




Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry


Book Description

Revisiting the dominant scientific method, 'coding,' with which investigators from sociology to literary criticism have sampled texts and catalogued their cultural messages, the author demonstrates that the celebrated hard outputs rest on misleading samples and on unfeasible classifying of the texts' meanings.







Teaching and Advocating to Prepare Student Leaders for a Diverse Workplace


Book Description

Each contributing author offers a unique perspective from their specific college discipline. Some of the scholarly essays focus on issues of health and wellbeing during the COVID crisis and what college educators can learn from those experiences to better equip them for handling such disruptions in the future. Other contributing authors focus on diversity of race and gender by exploring injustices as revealed in ethnic and minority literature and gender-focused literature. Some scholarly essays reveal how teaching foreign languages can foster a diversity consciousness in students and expose them to cultural experiences and cross-cultural communication of diverse people around the world. Some of the contributing authors use their agency to advocate for access for students who have experienced underrepresentation and to promote building an inclusive multicultural campus. Students with developed critical thinking skills, collaborative skills, and cultural intelligence will be prepared for leadership stateside and abroad.




Area Handbook for Jamaica


Book Description

General study of Jamaica - covers historical and geographical aspects, the social structure, living conditions, education, culture, mass media, the government, the political system, the economic structure, defence, the administration of justice, etc. Bibliography pp. 287 to 314, glossary, maps and statistical tables.




1974 Annual Supplement


Book Description




Making West Indian Literature


Book Description

"West Indian Literature, as a body of work, is a fairly recent phenomenon; and literary criticism has not always acknowledged the diversity of approaches to writing effectively. In Making West Indian Literature poet and critic Mervyn Morris explores examples of West Indian creativity shaping a range of responses to experience, which often includes colonial traces. Appreciating various kinds of making and a number of West Indian makers, these engaging essays and interviews display a recurrent interest in the processes of composition. Some of the prices highlight writer-performers who have not often been examined. This very readable book, often personal in tone, makes a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and understanding of West Indian Literature. "