Caribbean Crossroads Conference
A two-day conference at UCSB
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
2:30 PM - 7:00 PM
McCune Conference Room
6020 HSSB
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, 93106
This conference explores the interactions and points of contact between the different cultural and linguistic zones that make up the Caribbean region, in support of a less insular, more archipelagic sense of Caribbean culture. Contemporary Caribbean cultures are, as we know, the result of a complex mix of influences from around the world. Centuries before the term globalization was coined, the region occupied a strategic point in a global network of trade, communication, and, of course, labor. More recently, theories of intercultural hybridization and creolization have been central to debates over the cultural identity of the region. But what about the flows of culture within the region? Despite repeated calls for “charting the Caribbean as a literary region” (A. James Arnold), literary scholars have been much less adept than (for example) musicologists at tracing intra-Caribbean cultural exchange. This is due, in part, to the linguistic borders between the islands‑‑themselves a direct legacy of the region’s colonial history‑‑a fact that suggests the importance of comparatist and multilingual techniques for developing a better understanding of the region’s place within world literature.
Special Instructions
This event will take place Tuesday, February 21- Wednesday, February 22 on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus
For more information please contact
Robin Derby
derby@history.ucla.edu
Sponsor(s): French and Francophone Studies, LAI Cuba & Caribbean Working Group, The Consulate General of France in Los Angeles, UCSB: Series in Contemporary Literature, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Department of French and Italian, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Dept of Black Studies, Center for Black Studies, Hemispheric South/s research initiative, Department of Film and Media Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, Para/Sites Research Focus Group, American Cultures and Global Contexts Center