The theme will be ¡°The Caribbean in an Age of Global Apartheid: Fences,
Boundaries and Borders¡ªLiteral and Imagined.¡±
We welcome presentations from all disciplines and from members of the
community outside of academe. Our conference includes not only paper
presentations, but film, visual arts, music and performance art as well.
More information is available on our website,
www.caribbeanstudiesassociation.org.
We hope to hear from you.
(Ms.) Jan DeCosmo, Ph.D., Prof. Humanities
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Pres., CSA 2015
The Caribbean Studies Association hereby issues a call for papers for its
40th Annual Conference, set for May 25-29, 2015, at the Hilton Hotel
(Riverside) in New Orleans, Louisiana. The theme for 2015 is ¡°The
Caribbean in an Age of Global Apartheid: Fences, Boundaries, and Borders¡ª
Literal and Imagined.¡± The deadline for abstract submissions is December
1, 2014.
Description
Our theme for this year¡¯s conference reflects the unfortunate fact that
today¡¯s 21st century Planet Earth is experiencing a steady growth in global
inequality. The term ¡°global apartheid¡± refers to the fact that
throughout the world, fences, boundaries, borders and barriers confront all
aspects of human endeavor and are protected by a minority with power over
and control of most of the world¡¯s land, labor and capital. Yet at the
same time, globalization is producing population movements across all these
obstacles on an unprecedented planetary scale. Our week-long meeting
provides an opportunity from a variety of perspectives to analyze,
understand, and address the contradictions¡ªpushes and pulls¡ªof this new
global reality as it impacts the Caribbean and its diasporas.
Our designated conference site is New Orleans, often referred to as the
¡°northernmost point of the Caribbean.¡± Before the ¡°Anglo-American¡±
takeover and Civil War, it was a majority-black city with an implicitly
African Creole culture. Like many Caribbean nations, its unique history is
comprised of three distinct colonial eras entailing almost three centuries
of contact and synthesis among African slaves (the last to be imported
legally into the U.S.), French and Spanish colonists, gens de couleur libres
(free people of color), native peoples and Cajuns.
The influence of both Haiti and Cuba on New Orleans is palpable, especially
in the French Quarter and Faubourg Trem¨¦ (the site of Congo Square). In
the early 19th century, refugees from revolutionary Saint-Dominque
transformed Louisiana, many by way of eastern Cuba, providing inspiration
for the largest slave revolt in U.S. history (1811) that ended with a
tribunal held at Destrehan plantation near New Orleans (a planned CSA tour).
Perhaps less well known is the fact that New Orleans was a port city that
enjoyed an almost 200-year long trading relationship with Havana, ending
with the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
Today, New Orleans (and Southwest Louisiana/East Texas) is home to a robust
and distinctive subculture comprised of black Catholic speakers of Creole
(also known as Afro-French, Black Creoles, Black French, Creoles, Cr¨¦oles,
Cr¨¦oles Noirs, Creoles of Color). Plenaries, round-tables and featured
panels will connect these unique Creole cultures of the U.S. with those of
Africa and the Caribbean, especially those of Cuba and Haiti. A CSA
conference exhibition will show these historical connections visually by
featuring strikingly similar beadwork created by the Yoruba, Haitians, and
Mardi Gras Indians (Black Indians).
We welcome papers and presentations on subthemes that relate to the overall
conference theme, such as: 1) borders as one of the great contradictions in
the era of capitalist globalization, the question of national sovereignty,
responses to economic superfluity (joblessness) in the Caribbean and
Circum-Caribbean; demands for slavery reparations; 2) Creole identity,
history, language, migration, cuisine, literature, music, dance, festival
arts, art and architecture, religious and spiritual traditions; 3) global
climate change, environmental sustainability and urban geography, ¡°toxic
tourism¡± and disaster sites, abandoned populations, emigration and
immigration policies, ¡°nations without borders,¡± transnational
citizenship; and 4) efforts in the region to overcome the barriers of race,
ethnicity, language, nationality, religion, class status, gender and sexual
orientation.
We provide a setting where multi- and inter-disciplinary views are
encouraged, where the arts and humanities meet the social sciences, and
where different ways of seeing and communicating about the world are
presented by a diverse array of participants.
Guidelines for Panel/Paper Submissions
¡ñ All proposals must be submitted electronically via the CSA website. The
deadline for individual and panel submissions is 1 December 2014
¡ñ Abstracts must not exceed 125 words for individual papers or 250 words
for panels
¡ñ Titles for individual papers and for panels must not exceed 70 characters
(we reserve the right to edit for brevity)
¡ñ Proposed panels should contain at least 3 and no more than 4 presenters,
and panel chairperson must be named in the proposal
¡ñ Paper titles (and abstracts if possible) should be submitted in at least
one other language besides English (Spanish, French or Haitian Kreyol);
multilingual abstracts will be published in the electronic version of the
program.
¡ñ Panels should strive to represent a diversity of languages, rank,
affiliations and disciplines (i.e., inclusion of graduate students and
junior scholars on panels with senior scholars, activists, and/or
practitioners; panels composed of social science, arts and humanities
scholars)
¡ñ Papers/presentations that require special equipment, installation space,
rooms, translation services, etc., must be indicated on the submission form
¡ñ Presentations of films and visual and performing arts, as well as related
panels, are welcome. Please see the 2015 Film and Visual & Performing Arts
Committee Call for Proposals (below) for information and submission
instructions.
Membership dues and conference registration must be paid by April 15, 2015,
or papers/panels will not appear in the conference program. Membership and
registration details are available on the CSA website.
For help with translation or information on suggested topics, CSA travel
grants, visas, submissions forms, author celebration, literary salon and
executive council email addresses, contact
[log in to unmask]
CSA 2015 Film and Visual & Performing Arts Committee Call for Proposals
The CSA 2015 Film and Visual & Performing Arts Committee invites proposals
from filmmakers, visual and performing artists, and scholars and graduate
students to submit proposals for films and other visual modes of
expression¡ªas well as papers about films and the visual arts¡ªthat engage
the CSA 2015 conference theme of The Caribbean in an Age of Global
Apartheid: Fences, Boundaries, and Borders ¨C Literal and Imagined, when the
40th conference of the CSA convenes in New Orleans 25-29 May 2015. New
Orleans provides an ideal cultural and dialogical space for exploring how
arts and culture relate to issues facing the African diaspora and the
Caribbean today.
We seek proposals that explore the intersections of historical and current
artistic expressions of Caribbean and U.S. creole identities, and we
encourage proposals from filmmakers and artists who have illustrated the
intersection of the cultures of the Caribbean Basin and New Orleans to
create unique expressions that critically filter our perceptions of
socio-cultural identity. We hope to create a platform for a profound
discourse involving identity, religion, the arts and culture, political
economy, media and communication, such artistic forms being historical and
contemporary forays into the region¡¯s politics and economies.
Some questions that are likely to be raised in accordance with this Call for
Proposals include, but are not restricted to the following: How do the arts
and culture related to the Caribbean function in the political economy of
communication? How do they influence, and interject in Caribbean politics
and interpolate Caribbean subjects, and enter into a political economy of
communication? What gaps exist in the political economy of communication
concerning the Caribbean that the arts and culture can begin to fill? How do
they contribute to the negotiation of a social totality, an individual
totality or a discursive totality? In what ways do they assist in the
directing of a social imaginary toward nationalist or regional thought?
We welcome submissions that not only challenge the harmony implied by
previous paradigms of plurality but speak to the cleavages created by
hierarchies of race, class, gender, sexuality and language, as well as new
contradictory syntheses that defy the hierarchies. Equally, we seek
proposals addressing the role of film and art in reflecting,
shaping/defining, complicating and/or integrating plural environments in the
Caribbean, its diasporas and the New Orleans area.
We invite 250 word abstracts; please use the guidelines for panel/paper
proposals listed in the general Call for Papers. Send proposals for films
or film-related panels no later than December 1, 2015, to Terry-Ann Jones at
[log in to unmask] and those related to visual or performing arts to Jan
DeCosmo at jandecosmo
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