The Institute for the Study of the Americas warmly invites you to the
following seminars on the Caribbean in October.
Both events are free and open to the public.
Should you have any questions, please contact Olga Jimenez:
[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>  or 020 7862
8871.
 
For the full programme of the ISA seminars and conferences, please visit
http://www.americas.sas.ac.uk/events.php
<http://www.americas.sas.ac.uk/events.php>  . If you wish to receive
monthly emails about ISA events, please sign up to our mailing list
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Wednesday 8 October, 17:00 - 19:00 
Routes to Freedom: Migration and the Construction of Emancipation in the
Eastern Caribbean
<http://www.americas.sas.ac.uk/events.php> Laurence Brown, Manchester
University 
Venue: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London WC1B
5DS 
 
Migration was central to the constitution of post-emancipation society
across the Eastern Caribbean, however its impact varied considerably
between colonies and over time. Exploring the intersections and
exchanges between disparate currents of internal migration, regional
emigration and indentured immigration provides a new vision of the
contested nature of these movements and the trans-national networks that
shaped their development. From British Guiana to Martinique, from Puerto
Rico to Trinidad, the routes to freedom that emerged in the 1830s and
1840s were the shifting products of regional relationships rather than
over-determined by the internal forces celebrated in nationalist
historiographies.
 
Laurence Brown is Lecturer in Migration History at the University of
Manchester. After teaching at the University of the West Indies
(Barbados), his research has focused on the comparative history of the
Caribbean migration resulting in a series of publications on the
interactions between British, French and Spanish colonies during the
nineteenth century. He is also engaged in an AHRC-funded research
project on the Caribbean diaspora in Manchester using GIS to map the
networks, exchanges and events which have shaped immigrant identities in
the city.
 
 
Wednesday 22 October, 17:00 - 19:00
Colonial Rule and Spiritual Power: Obeah, the State, and Caribbean
Culture
<http://www.americas.sas.ac.uk/events.php> Diana Paton and Maarit Forde,
Newcastle University 
Venue: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 35 Tavistock Square,
London WC1H 9HA
 
Diana Paton and Maarit Forde will present work based on their current
collaborative project which examines the cultural, political and legal
history of obeah in the Caribbean. Diana Paton's paper, 'Obeah Acts:
Producing and Policing the Boundaries of Religion in the Caribbean' will
examine obeah's status as a long-standing crime and ask why it has
proved so difficult to write it into the category 'religion'. Maarit
Forde's paper 'Money, Gifts, and Moralities: Obeah in Early 20th Century
Trinidad' uses evidence from obeah cases from Trinidad in the early
twentieth century to examine the significance of money and gifts in
Caribbean culture.
 
Diana Paton is a historian whose books include No Bond but the Law:
Punishment, Race and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870
(2004) and Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World (2005).
Maarit Forde is an anthropologist whose work focuses on religion,
migrations and transnationalism, gender, kinship, and the Caribbean. Her
PhD, 'Marching to Zion: Creolisation in Spiritual Baptist rituals and
cosmology' was completed at the University of Helsinki in 2002. Both are
currently at Newcastle University.