Going Caribbean!

Rafael Martins

2009-11-01T22:01:00.001Z

Rafael Martins, 21 anos, natural de Lisboa, frequenta o segundo ano da Licenciatura em Estudos Artísticos, variante em Artes e Culturas Comparadas, da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. É bolseiro (BII) da FCT no âmbito do grupo THELEME (CEC), no projecto CAMP (City Arts and Media Platform).

Cristina Branco de Sousa

2009-10-30T19:52:00.003Z

Cristina Branco de Sousa, natural de Lisboa, 18 anos, frequenta o segundo ano do curso de Estudos Artísticos: Artes e Culturas Comparadas na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

Kristian Van Haesendonck

2009-10-30T10:54:00.000Z

Kristian Van Haesendonck taught Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture in the United States (Princeton, Villanova) and is currently researcher in comparative Latin American, Spanish and Caribbean literatures at the Centre for Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon. He graduated in Romance Languages from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and obtained his PhD in Latin American Literature from Leiden University (The Netherlands). His book ¿Encanto o espanto? Identidad y nación en la novela puertorriqueña actual, a comparative study of contemporary Puerto Rican novels, was published by Vervuert-Iberoamericana (Frankfurt-Madrid 2008).

Susana Correia

2009-10-29T23:21:00.006Z

Susana dos Santos Correia frequentou o primeiro ano do curso de Arqueologia da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Actualmente, é estudante do segundo ano do curso de Estudos Artísticos - Artes e Culturas Comparadas - na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

Seamus Heaney's Antigone, Translation and Tranposition: From The Abbey Theatre to The Globe via the Caribbean

2009-10-29T23:17:00.000Z

The Irish poet Seamus Heaney has used translation in the past as a means of examining political situations from an oblique angle. His earlier translation of Philoctetes (which was performed as The Cure at Troy for the Field Day Theatre) was very clearly a comment on the political situation in the North of Ireland. One of the most memorable quotes from the play “Making hope and history rhyme” has become a catchphrase used by artists and politicians alike. Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott have long association, dating back to their days on the faculty at Harvard in the 1980’s. This paper will examine Heaney’s translation of Antigone and determine how and why Walcott chose to transpose it to the Carribean. It will also examine the use of language in the translation and illustrate how Heaney and Walcott are together at an ironical distance from “the English tradition of English literature and of English culture. Because I’m doing English in Belfast and he’s doing English in St Lucia” as Heaney put it in an interview given before the premier of the opera in 2008.

Vers une « muséologie du Divers », L’entremêlement du Tout-monde appliqué à la muséographie

2009-10-29T23:12:00.001Z

« Le Divers n’est donné à chacun que comme une relation, non comme un absolu pouvoir ni une unique possession. Le divers renaît quand les hommes se diversifient concrètement dans leurs libertés différentes. Alors il n’exige plus que l’on renonce à soi. L’Autre est en moi, parce que je suis moi. »[1] Cette esthétique du « Divers », célébrée dans la littérature, de L’Essai sur l’exotisme (1955) de Victor Ségalen, à la Poétique de la Relation (1990) d’Edouard Glissant, fait écho au renouvellement de la réflexion sur le rapport à l’altérité, à l’œuvre dans les musées d’ethnographie européens, depuis maintenant deux décennies.

En effet, depuis les années 1990, les musées européens d’ethnographie changent. Ces mutations et rénovations répondent toutes au même besoin : celui d’adapter des institutions très anciennes aux défis de la mondialisation. Ces musées - qui ont constitué l’essentiel de leurs fonds entre la fin du XIXe siècle et la première moitié du XXe siècle, par des collectes en Afrique, Amérique, Asie et Océanie - ont donc entrepris de grands chantiers visant à les transformer sur les plans architectural, muséographique, scientifique et idéologique. A l’occasion de ces refondations et restructurations, les arts et cultures des Caraïbes font une entrée plus importante sur la scène muséale européenne, qui peine cependant à matérialiser ce patrimoine culturel. Des défis multiples s’imposent en effet aux institutions : 1° patrimonialiser l’entre-deux qui surgit dans la rencontre et nous évoque l’entrelacement du Tout-Monde, au delà de la limite sublimée de la frontière, 2° muséaliser le caractère immatériel et fugace d’un patrimoine qui émerge de situations de contact, 3° et inscrire les arts de la Caraïbe dans une territorialité plus vaste celle du continuum culturel des mondes créoles englobant Afrique australe et orientale et l’Océan indien.

Le Divers, que le Traité du Tout-Monde (1997) décrit comme une perception de l’altérité dans la multitude, rejoint donc les préoccupations universalistes des institutions muséales. Et cette poétique du « Divers » plaide pour une transposition des principes littéraires dans la muséologie.

[1] Edouard Glissant, L’intention poétique, Seuil, 1969

Jane Lombardi

2009-10-29T23:11:00.000Z

I am a third-year undergraduate student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. I am double majoring in Spanish and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I was born in Winter Park, Florida, but grew up in Alpharetta, Georgia about an hour north of Atlanta. I am extremely interested in Latin American cultures and languages, especially Spanish and Portuguese. I also enjoy traveling and learning about cultures first hand.

Zahira M. Cruz

2009-10-29T23:10:00.000Z

Zahira M. Cruz es estudiante de Literatura Española a nivel graduado en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, recinto de Río Piedras (UPRRP). Su formación académica empezó con los estudios filosóficos para dedicarse luego al estudio de la obra literaria. Intereses: romanticismo español y literatura del siglo XIX, ética y filosofía antigua.

La deconstrucción de la remembranza romántica en la literatura nuyorrican

2009-10-29T23:08:00.000Z

TEMA: Literatura caribeña de la diáspora y del exilio.
RESUMEN: La memoria como abandono de la conciencia que se lleva a cabo en la recuperación de personas, momentos o lugares perdidos (o revividos de forma ficticia) es una idea originalmente romántica. El abandono que supone este tipo de actividad se refleja a menudo en una escritura cargada, que se zambulle en artificios connotativos que simbolizan el olvido, la añoranza y la idealización. La literatura nuyorrican no apela a la memoria para recuperar paraísos perdidos ni lamenta una puertorriqueñidad negada, sino que busca espacios nuevos donde desarrollar una nueva puertorriqueñidad, mejor dicho, una nuyorriqueñidad. La literatura nuyorrican no es romántica, sino más bien postmoderna. De hecho, frente a la complejidad y a lo absurdo de la vida, siempre hay una intersección entre el recuerdo personal y el recuerdo colectivo. La memoria, entonces, ejerce un esfuerzo consciente sobre todo cuando recurre para cubrir un papel histórico y social. Esto se refleja en muchos personajes secundarios de obras nuyorricans como Down these mean streets de Piri Tomas. Esta memoria presente en los personajes o autores de los textos de la diáspora puertorriqueña es la motivación que tal vez empuja a críticos como Efraín Barrada a analizar más de cerca la idealización romántica presente en los textos como el de Piri Thomas como producto de una rememoración. El propósito es destacar el elemento romántico en la diáspora puertorriqueña no porque se produzcan textos románticos en este movimiento literario, sino porque éste es un elemento que funge como herramienta para deconstruir el propio ideal romántico. En otras palabra, el empleo del elemento romántico es una actitud postmodernista, que confiere a la literatura nuyorrican una herramienta más para ejercer una fuerte reacción ante la falta de espacios propios además de una tajante acción de autodefinición en un contexto nuevo y a menudo hostil.

The Origins of Man: Contemporary Literary Representations of Masculinity in the Caribbean.

2009-10-29T23:07:00.002Z

I propose, in this paper, to read the construction of Caribbean identities as formulated in contemporary literature emergent from within the Hispanophone, Francophone, and Anglophone Caribbean (Juan Pedro Gutiérrez, Patrick Chamoiseau, and H. Nigel Thomas respectively) though a gendered lens—specifically masculinity—to explore how differing representations of manhood from across the region reflect, challenge, or otherwise engage with colonial legacies, postcolonial national politics, notions of national identity and citizenship within their specific cultural and political context. I wish to draw comparisons between these texts, as well as highlight how historical, political, cultural and linguistic differences and traditions affect the very notion of what it is to be a Caribbean male, a citizen, and indeed, a nation.

2009-10-29T23:07:00.001Z

New Narrative styles, national identity and “magic realism” in Edwidge Danticat’s poetic tales.

Rosetta D’Angelo

2009-10-29T23:06:00.000Z

Dr. Rosetta D’Angelo holds a Ph.D in Italian Studies and Literature from Rutgers University and is Professor of Italian Studies and Literature at Ramapo College. She also teaches in the Master of Liberal Arts program. Dr. D’Angelo was instrumental on developing and implementing a Foreign Language Program at Ramapo College. She teaches many different levels of Italian language, culture and literature. She also initiated the Italian business and cinema courses. Dr. D’Angelo is an active member of many modern language and literature associations. She has organized workshops and presented scholarly papers in the USA and abroad. She has published extensively in the field of medieval literature, contemporary poetry and women studies. She has co-authored two textbooks: L’Arte di Comunicare and Eccoci, a book on medieval literature: Il Poemetto dell’Intelligenza, a poetry book: Itinerari and a forthcoming anthology: Resisting Bodies: Italian Women Partisans during World War II .Dr. D’Angelo was the recipient of the 2003 “Jewls of Poetry Award” by Carrello Editors. Her poetry has also appeared in anthologies and journals in the USA, Canada and Italy. She serves as the Executive President of The Association of Italian American Educators and is very involved in the Italian American community.

Oralituraines and Caribbean diasporic identities in Gisèle Pineau’s "L’Exil Selon Julia" and "L’Ame prêtée aux Oiseaux"

2009-10-29T23:03:00.002Z

In her autobiographical novel L’Exil Selon Julia the Guadeloupean writer Gisèle Pineau links her grandmother Julia or Man Ya’s exile in the stark métropole with her own “exil par procuration”(a symbolic exile/by proxy) as a victim of extreme racism in her school in France during the sixties. In L’Ame prêtée aux Oiseaux Sibylle, a Guadeloupénne who is adopted first by Coraline in Guadeloupe and then (along with her son Marcello) by a seventy year-old Parisienne, Lila, in France, is caught up in the interstices of an identity crisis. The destinies of Julia and Gisèle are linked in an intergenerational solidarity as are those of Lila and Sybille in Oiseaux. The older “oralituraines” are what I call “poetic mothers” who seem to replace the biological mothers (incapable or unwilling to speak of the past or afford any emotional support to their daughters) and postcolonial “griottes, female storytellers who weave memory, history and positive lessons in their hybrid narratives and help heal the fractured diasporic identities. In the context of patriarchal and Afro-caribbean myths of "motherhood”, Pineau proposes new Caribbean female identities and family configurations: a mother/daughter dyad based on poetic rather than biological ties, substituting the "literary" mother for the "nurturing" one. Gisèle Pineau herself belongs to a lineage of postcolonial female Caribbean writers such as Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Paule Marshall in her practice of “scripted storytelling” recording various female occulted histories (in Oiseaux we hear Jenny, the Anglophone Caribbean slave, Guadeloupean Néhémie and Clothilde, the interpreters of dreams along with Lila the aging white actress), as the author engages with general theories of Créolité, feminism and and post-modernism to articulate what Adlai Murdoch would call a “a creolized, feminocentric post-colonial voice”.

Whose paradise?:

2009-10-29T23:02:00.000Z

Imperialism and the Black Experience in the Poetry of Nicolás Guillén

Patricia Couto

2009-10-29T22:59:00.002Z

Patricia Couto, member of CEC, was born in the Netherlands, studied Germanic Philology in Coimbra (FLUC 1975) and holds a MA in Comparative Literature (FLUL 1996). She has worked at Portuguese schools and taught Dutch Language and Culture at FLUL. She has translated authors such as Jan Slauerhoff, Cees Nooteboom, Gerrit Komrij and Etty Hillesum into Portuguese. Currently, she is writing her PhD thesis on Glazemaker’s seventeenth century translation of Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinaçam.

Robert McCormick

2009-10-29T22:56:00.001Z

Robert McCormick is Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland. Recently he has published articles on Ousmane Sembene and Maryse Condé. He is the organizer of "Caribbean Unbound," the series of conferences on Caribbean literature and culture held every two years on the campus of Franklin College Switzerland.

Helga Costa

2009-10-29T22:54:00.002Z

Helga Costa é licenciada em Ciências da Comunicação pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, com Erasmus na Holanda, na Haagse Hogeschool. Trabalhou no Jornal de Notícias, na Media Capital, na Folha de São Paulo e no portal SAPO, tendo também publicado no jornal Expresso. Neste momento, estuda Estudos Artísticos - Artes e Culturas Comparadas - na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

José Pedro Sousa

2009-10-29T22:53:00.000Z

José Pedro Sousa é licenciado em Língua Literatura e Cultura, variante de Inglês e Espanhol pela FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Actualmente frequenta o programa de mestrado em Relações Internacionais e Ciência Política na mesma faculdade. Bolseiro (BII) da FCT no âmbito do projecto "Diálogos Ibéricos e Ibero-americanos", Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

Sónia Miceli

2009-10-29T22:44:00.003Z

Sonia Miceli é licenciada em Línguas e Culturas Modernas pela Universidade da Calabria (Itália) e é mestranda em Estudos Comparatistas na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, cidade em que vive desde 2007. Trabalha nas áreas da Literatura comparada e Literaturas pós-coloniais, e é professora de inglês na escola primária.

Jane Bryce

2009-10-28T21:35:00.001Z

Jane Bryce was born and brought up in Tanzania, and has since lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, where she did her doctoral research on Nigerian women’s writing at Obafemi Awolowo University, 1983-88. Since 1992, she has taught at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, where she is Professor of African Literature and Film. She publishes in the areas of contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and was founder and Co-director of the Barbados Festival of African and Caribbean Film. She is the author of Chameleon (Peepal Tree Press, 2007) a collection of short fiction, and the editor of Caribbean Dispatches: Inside Stories of the Caribbean (Macmillan, 2006), and also contributes to newspapers and journals in the Caribbean and Nigeria. She is working on a memoir/travelogue/portrait of a place drawing on her memories and recent experience of Tanzania.

Bleeding, wailing and hypnosis:

2009-10-28T21:32:00.003Z

Art as talisman against violence and trauma for a Vincentian artist

Jane Bryce (University of the West Indies, Cave Hill)

Caroline ‘bops’ Sardine is a young Vincentian artist working in the media of painting, installation and assemblage employing an iconography redolent of violence and trauma. The paper is concerned to decode this iconography, and the graffiti-like text which often adorns it, in order not only to tease out its significations, but also to examine how it speaks to textual and artistic conventions employed by other regional artists. By highlighting the dialogue between verbal and visual, it will suggest an intertextuality which goes beyond generic classification.

Doris Hambuch

2009-10-28T21:32:00.001Z

Doris Hambuch is an Assistant Professor at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain. Her degree in Comparative Literature was completed at the University of Alberta, Canada with a dissertation titled “Displacements in Contemporary Caribbean Writing.” She has taught at King Saud University in Riyadh and in Women’s Studies at Western Illinois University. Her publications include articles on Derek Walcott and Frank Martinus Arion.

"Wide Sargasso Sea" at the Movies

2009-10-28T21:31:00.000Z

Doris Hambuch (United Arab Emirates University)

Wide Sargasso Sea, first published by Jean Rhys in 1966, is now considered a classic in Caribbean Literature. Not only has it become the object of numerous academic inquiries, it has also inspired at least two very different cinematic adaptations, John Duigan’s in 1993 and Brendan Maher’s in 2006. Duigan’s Australian adaptation, described as a “seriously exotic Gothic romance” in a New York Times review (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/16/movies/review-film-mrs-rochester-no-1-long-before-jane-eyre.html), emphasizes the sensual aspect of the story. Maher’s rendering, produced for British television more than a decade later, seems more interested in the importance of the Rhys text for the British literary tradition. In Literature Through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation Robert Stam demonstrates the very intriguing approach to reading related written and audiovisual texts without the central question about ‘fidelity’. Following Stam’s “broad intertextual as opposed to narrow judgmental approach” (Stam 5) I will analyze the two cinematic adaptations of Wide Sargasso Sea as independent entities before I move on to identify constructive connections with their hypotext.

Papiamentu and Upper Guinea Creole: Linguistic and Historical Ties

2009-10-28T21:30:00.001Z

Bart Jacobs

This paper addresses the linguistic and historical relationships between Papiamentu (PA) and the Upper Guinea branch of Portuguese creole as spoken on the Santiago Island of Cape Verde (SCV) and in Guinea-Bissau and Casamance (GBC).
The origins of PA’s mixed Spanish-Portuguese lexicon have been subject to intense debate. Lipski asserts that up to present “scholars are (...) evenly divided as to the Spanish vs. Portuguese origins of Papiamento” (2005). Typical of this division is that in 1996 Munteanu painted PA as an originally Spanish creole, while in that same year Martinus defended PA’s Afro-Portuguese origins.
More recently, Kouwenberg & Michel (2007) labeled those hypotheses that defend PA’s Spanish origins as “untenable”, while Munteanu (2008), regarding PA’s origins, maintains quite the opposite: “Algunos estudiosos ponen en tela de juicio su origen hispánico y defienden su afiliación portuguesa, pero en la actualidad esta posición ha perdido mucho terreno”.
Quint (2000) claimed that “Le papiamento et le badiais [SCV] ont une origine commune”. This claim, however, did not find any resonance in related publications. Parkvall (2000), regarding Papiamentu’s origins, declares: “Relexification from an African Portuguese Creole does not strike me as particularly likely”, and Lipski (2005) maintains that Papiamentu “is not clearly related to any West African creole”.
In line with Quint’s claim, the present paper argues that an early Upper Guinea Creole variety was introduced into the ABC-Islands in the second half of the 17th century, where it would subsequently be relexified by Spanish. To underpin this claim, we will highlight the linguistic correspondences between the creoles at all levels of the grammar and, with the aid of little known 19th century PA texts, demonstrate that early PA was even closer to SCV than it is nowadays.
The paper closes with the presentation of little known historical data that account for the linguistic transfer from Upper Guinea to Curaçao in the 17th century (cf. Jacobs, to appear & in press).

La cartografía poética de Celestino.

2009-10-28T21:28:00.000Z

Una lectura deleuziana de Celestino antes del alba de Reinaldo Arenas

Antonio Bergel

«Huir es trazar una línea, líneas, toda una cartografía. Sólo hay una manera de descubrir mundos: a través de una larga fuga quebrada», dice Gilles Deleuze respecto a la literatura. En Celestino antes del alba el escritor cubano Reinaldo Arenas traza una línea discontinua hasta dibujar el mapa de una infancia y un mundo que se poetiza en cuanto a escritura otra. En ese nuevo territorio no sólo surge el cuerpo-personaje-niño Celestino, sino también una conciencia poética dis-locada en el mal-decir, es decir, una sintáctica que se desestructura bien en repeticiones poéticas, bien en el balbuceo de este personaje central:

-¡Celestino! ¡Celestino! ¿Qué tiempo dura una oración?

-Mmmmmmm mm m mmmmm m mmmmmmmm.

-Mmmmmmmm mmm mmm.

-Mmmmmm.

-Mmmmmmmmmm.

-MMMMMM MMMM mmmmmmmmmmmm...

Así, Reinaldo Arenas, ejerce una violencia gramatical que conformará su devenir-infancia, esto es, una escritura artística que produce lo real, que crea vida. Entonces, si esta fuga supone la partida de unos poderes sociopolíticos asfixiantes, el escape de una opresión vital –y realmente sucedida: la represión del régimen castrista-, la vía de esta escritura señala, ya de por sí, una posibilidad de vida más personal. Cualquier idea sobre compromiso, según en términos deleuzianos, señalan un empeño vital menor en la propia literatura (aquí la convergencia con los pensamientos de Nietzsche), pero sin abandonar la referencia a los flujos (de poder) externos a ella. De esta manera, infancia y nacimiento poético en Arenas surgen, no sólo como conflicto ético y moral con la realidad, más bien como pensamiento que se escribe en su obra, lugar fabuloso e insular (mapa casi invisible) como aquella isla que, en los mapas oficiales, aparece denominada “Cuba”.

Blood Sugar Sex Magic: Tourist Imaginings of Caribbean Nation

2009-10-28T21:27:00.000Z

Angeletta K. M. Gourdine (Louisiana State University)

Tourist publications are fictions replete with images of exotic topography,corporeal bodies, and ritual practices. This essay reads select Michelle Cliff and Julia Alvarez¹s narratives for how they revise images of Jamaica¹s and Dominican Republic¹s national histories as presented by tourist lures and travel writers¹ reflections. Both islands, though different historically in terms of colonialism and occupation as well as linguistically are collapsed into the moniker, monolith, ³Caribbean,² and the result is an erasure of national identity. Both writers use the traditionally female role as storyteller to insert women into their nation¹s story and to make them more than body, national or corporeal.

Rodrigo Pereira

2009-10-23T11:01:00.000+01:00

Rodrigo Torres Pereira, 23 anos, natural de Lisboa, estudante do 2º ano do curso de Estudos Artísticos, variante Artes e Culturas Comparadas da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (FLUL). Bolseiro do Centro de Estudos Comparatistas (FLUL).

Raquel Baltazar

2009-10-22T18:18:00.002+01:00

Raquel Baltazar é doutoranda em Estudos Comparatistas na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (Literatura Portuguesa Contemporânea e Literatura Hispano-Americana séc XX). Investigadora do Centro de Estudos Comparatistas. Docente no ISLA. Leitora do Instituto Camões na Universidade de Edimburgo (2002-2006). Autora do livro Os Gaiatos da colecção Ler Português da Lidel.

Isabel Araújo

2009-10-22T18:15:00.002+01:00

Isabel Araújo Branco. Docente na Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Trabalha nas áreas da Literatura Comparada, Literaturas Hispano-Americanas, Tradução e Estudos Contemporâneos da América Latina. Membro do Instituto de Estudos Ibéricos e Ibero-Americanos (Uiversidade Nova de Lisboa) e do projecto Diálogos Ibéricos e Ibero-Americanos (Universidade de Lisboa).

"Assassinos" by José Triana

2009-10-22T18:11:00.003+01:00

Assassinos, é um espectáculo criado pelo estreante colectivo teatral “Entre Pontos”, uma adaptação da peça La noche de los asesinos do cubano José Triana. Neste texto, escrito originalmente na década de cinquenta, Triana coloca em cena três irmãos que “encenam” a morte dos pais, libertando-se da asfixia de um sistema paternal fortemente ditatorial e opressivo. O resultado deste crime é uma reflexão sagaz e acutilante sobre valores tão universais como a liberdade, a urgência de afirmação e a revolução.
Muitíssimo actual e dotada de um sentido de teatralidade alucinante, esta tragédia combina a depuração das unidades pseudo-aristotélicas com a mestria dos ensinamentos shakespearianos patente, por exemplo, no recurso à “play within a play” e na hamletização dos personagens, ou não fossem Lalo, Cuco e Bebo, também eles, heróis da inacção.

Assassinos is an adaptation of the play La noche de los asesinos (written by the cuban playwriter José Triana) created by the most recent Portuguese theatre company: “Entre Pontos”. In this play, originally written in the 50’s, Triana stages three brothers who “play” the murderer of their parents, freeing themselves from an oppressive and suffocating dictatorial system embodied by their father and mother. The outcome of this crime is a thorough and long-sighted reflection on universal themes such as liberty, the necessity of vindication of ones’ own voice and revolution.
This tragedy, extremely contemporary on its themes and deeply theatrical in composition, combines the clearance of the so called Aristotelian units with the mastery of Shakespeare, evident in the use of the “play within a play” artifice as well as in the hamletization of Lalo, Cuco and Bebo who, like their archetype, are truly inaction heroes.

Mimi Barthélémy

2009-10-22T17:57:00.004+01:00

Conteuse, actrice, écrivaine et metteuse en scène. Née en Haïti, Mimi Barthélémy fait ses études supérieures en France et vit ensuite à l'étranger. De retour en France, elle fait des études théâtrales et cinématographiques. Puisant dans la tradition orale d'Haïti qui est en langue créole, Barthélémy tisse dans ses contes les deux langues, le français et le créole, dans le souci de transmettre ce qu'elle a reçu en partage et d'en être le témoin à part entière au sein de la francophonie. Son désir de rencontres artistiques l'amène en 1998 à participer à la création collective Ainsi soient-elles avec cinq autres conteuses et à jouer, en tant que comédienne, dans Mistero Buffo Caraïbe d'après Dario Fo, mis en scène par Dominique Lurcel. Elle joue dans de nombreux lieux, festivals et salons du livre en France, en Haïti et dans le monde; sa pièce Une très belle mort – jouée en duo gestuel avec sa fille, la plasticienne Elodie Barthélémy – a connu un franc succès en Avignon, l'été 2001 avec sa compagnie, Ti Moun Fou. Elle préside plusieurs jurys de contes. En 2000, elle reçoit le grade de Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite et en 2001 celui d'Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. www.mimibarthelemy.com/

Mimi Barthélémy is a name synonymous with storytelling. In fact, there are very few playwrights or professional actors involved in the art of storytelling who haven’t heard of this Haitian artist. Barthélémy has succeeded in transforming an art – you could also call it traditional folklore – into an experimental theatrical experience of a very high standard. In doing this, she has travelled all over the globe receiving numerous awards and honours for her breakthrough work that borders on the magical. Her focus is on storytelling from every possible angle. She writes, she directs and she does this through a deep understanding of music and sociology. She holds the distinctions of Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite, France and Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. www.mimibarthelemy.com/

Hector Ramos-Flores

2009-10-22T17:53:00.000+01:00

Nic Ramos-Flores was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and moved to Orlando, Florida when he was just a toddler. He is a sophomore at Rollins College and currently is a Spanish Literature Major with a Secondary Education minor. He is the president of the Latin American Student Association at Rollins College and is a contributing writer for the school newspaper.

Thomas Glave

2009-10-18T14:24:00.003+01:00

Thomas Glave was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A 1993 Honors graduate of Bowdoin College and a graduate of Brown University, Glave traveled as a Fulbright Scholar to Jamaica, where he studied Jamaican historiography and Caribbean intellectual and literary traditions. While in Jamaica, Glave worked on issues of social justice, and helped found the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG).Glave is author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, nominated by the American Library Association for their “Best Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year” award and by the Quality Paperback Book Club for their Violet Quill/Best New Gay/Lesbian Fiction Award. His essay collection Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent, nominated for a 2006 Publishing Triangle Gay Men’s Nonfiction Award, won a 2005 Lambda Literary Award. His edited anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, was published in June 2008. The recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including an O. Henry Prize for fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, Glave was named a “Writer on the Verge” by The Village Voice in 2000. He is presently Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
www.thomasglave.com

Karin Amatmoekrim

2009-10-18T14:19:00.005+01:00

Karin Amatmoekrim was born in Paramaribo, Surinam in 1976 to a Javanese mother and a Chinese-Creole-Indian father. She emigrated to The Netherlands with her mother and younger brother at the age of five. She studied psychology for two years at the University of Amsterdam before turning her attention to Dutch literature. She made her literary debut in 2004 with ‘Het knipperleven’ (Flashlife), an existential take on life in the fast lane for a group of twenty-somethings. Two years later, Amatmoekrim drew on her own family history for her second novel ‘Wanneer wij samen zijn’ (When we are together). It tells the story of three generations of a Javanese-Surinamese family. In 2006 Amatmoekrim was asked to contribute to a collection of short stories called ‘25 under 35’, highlighting the most notable young writers in The Netherlands and Belgium. Her third novel ‘Titus’ published this year was nominated for the Black Magic Women’s Literary Prize. (Also nominated was Radio Books author Naima el Bezaz.)

www.amatmoekrim.com

Theo D’haen

2009-10-18T14:17:00.001+01:00

Theo D’haen (Antwerp, 1950) Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Leuven (2002-), Chair of English and American Literature at Leyden (1987-2005), Professor of English Literature at Utrecht (1978-1986). Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne III (2004) and Harvard (2007). PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Recent book-length publications in English include: Contemporary American Crime Writing (Palgrave, 2001), Configuring Romanticism (Rodopi, 2003), How Far is America From Here? (Rodopi, 2005), and Cultural Identity and Postmodern Writing (Rodopi, 2006). Published some 50 books, as author, co-author, editor, or co-editor, and some 150 articles. Editor-in-chief of the European Review. Editor of various scholarly series, and advisory editor to several journals, in the fields of Comparative Literature, English and American Literature, and Dutch Literature. Served on the boards of, and organized world congresses for, the International Comparative Literature Association and the International American Studies Association. Currently President of FILLM. Chair of the Literary and Theatrical Studies Section of the Academia Europaea..
More on http://www.kuleuven.be/cv/u0040631.htm and http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/literary_studies/fiches/theodhaen.htm

Maarten van Delden

2009-10-18T14:15:00.002+01:00

Maarten van Delden is Professor and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and Modernity (Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), which received an "Outstanding Scholarly Book" award from "Choice" magazine, and co-author (with Yvon Grenier) of Gunshots at the Fiesta: Literature and Politics in Latin America (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009). He is currently writing a book examining the evolution of cultural stereotypes in the relationship between Mexico and the United States.

Kathleen Gyssels

2009-10-18T14:12:00.002+01:00

Kathleen Gyssels is member of the Postcolonial Research Group at the University of Antwerp. Her research focuses on Caribbean literature from a comparative, interdisciplinary perspective, with emphasis on female writing and the dialogue between la Francophonie and postcolonial theory. Her works include Filles de solitude: Essai sur l'identité antillaise dans les [auto-]biographies fictives de Simone et André Schwarz-Bart (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996) and Le Folklore et la littérature créole dans l'oeuvre de Simone Schwarz-Bart (Guadeloupe) (Brussels: Académie des Sciences d'Outre-mer, 1997). She is the co-editor with Paul Pelckmans of Het labyrint van de bevrijding: Portretten van tien postkoloniale auteurs (Kapellen: Acco/Ned. Boekhandel, 1999), and her most recent publication is Sages sorcières? Révision de la mauvaise mère dans Beloved (Toni Morrison), Praisesong for the Widow (Paule Marshall), et Moi, Tituba, sorcière noire de Salem (Maryse Condé) (New York, Lanham: America University Press, 2001). More information on her publications can be found on the Postcolonial Literatures page of the University of Antwerp: http://www.ufsia.ac.be/postcolonial/

Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

2009-10-18T14:07:00.002+01:00

INEKE PHAF–RHEINBERGER is an independent scholar residing in Berlin, and an affiliated researcher at the Latin American Studies Center (LASC), University of Maryland at College Park and and Humboldt Universität, Berlin. Her major focus is on Caribbean studies in relationship to Africa and Latin America. Her many publications include, The ‘Air of Liberty’. Narratives of the South Atlantic Past (Rodopi, 2008). Creole Presence in the Caribbean and Latin America (editor, 1996); A History of the Literature of the Caribbean, vol. 2 (subeditor for the Dutch-speaking Caribbean, 2001); Memorias de la fragmentación: Tierra de libertad y paisajes del Caribe (editor, 2005); and AfricAmericas: Itineraries, Dialogues, and Sounds (2008).

Aart G. Broek

2009-10-18T14:02:00.002+01:00

Aart G. Broek, ph.d., (Netherlands, 1954), a senior researcher associated part-time with Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde [Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies], Leyden, see www.kitlv.nl, and a ‘diversity & integration’ consultant for the Carilexis bureau, see www.carilexis.nl; at present involved in research in the field of criminology, viz. research into the potential effects of ‘exclusion’, including the ‘violent scope of perceptions of shame’. This resulted in the publication of De terreur van schaamte; Brandstof voor agressie [The terror of shame; Fuel for aggression] Haarlem, Neth., 2007)

He lived and worked in Curaçao from 1981 – 2001, especially involved in research and advice projects in the field of Caribbean cultural studies; he published curricula for secondary schools in the Dutch Caribbean (such as What yuh haffi say bout dat? [on Caribbean writing in English], ‘s Hertogenbosch, Neth., 1997), a substantial number of articles and book length studies (such as the two volume De kleur van mijn eiland; ideologie en schrijven in Papiamentu sinds 1863 [The colour of my island; Ideology and writing in Papiamentu since 1863], Leyden, Neth., 2006), columns, reports, reviews, and essays (collected in Het zilt van de passaten; Caribische cultuur in de 20ste eeuw [Salty tradewinds; Caribbean culture in the 20th century], Haarlem, Neth., 2000). He recently co-edited the complete works of one of the best known Dutch Antillean authors, viz. Tip Marugg (De hemel is van korte duur; Verzameld werk 1945 – 1995 [Heaven is short-lived; Collected Works 1945-1995], Amsterdam, Neth., 2009) and edited essays for another well known Dutch Antillean author, viz. Boeli van Leeuwen (Met liefde behandelen [Treasure Up], Haarlem, Neth., 2008).

Caribbean Gender Trouble, l’Autre du cosmopolitisme postcolonial

2009-10-13T12:00:00.003+01:00

Yolaine Parisot (Université Rennes 2)

De Stuart Hall à Homi K. Bhabha, dont The Location of culture (1994) s’appuie tour à tour sur V. S. Naipaul, Wilson Harris ou Frantz Fanon, les théories postcoloniales, inscrites dans les Cultural Studies, ont fait de la Caraïbe et de son champ littéraire travaillé par les traversées historiques, migratoires et esthétiques, un paradigme. De fait, de la négritude à la créolité, des indigénismes à la créolisation, c’est la multiplication des manifestes et des propositions théoriques qui caractérise cet espace et qui en construit une histoire littéraire, certes potentiellement comparée, mais au masculin.
C’est pourquoi nous nous proposons de revisiter ce paradigme caribéen à partir de quatre voix féminines : celles, anglophones, de Jamaïca Kincaid et d’Edwidge Danticat, qui, respectivement originaires d’Antigua et d’Haïti, appartiennent tout autant au champ nord-américain ; celles, francophones, de la Guadeloupéenne Maryse Condé et de l’Haïtienne Yanick Lahens. Les problématiques développées dans les autobiographies détournées, My Brother (1997) et Brother, I’m dying (2007), et dans les fictionnalisations de l’histoire immédiate, Les Belles Ténébreuses (2008) et La Couleur de l’aube (2009), permettent d’interroger la spécificité d’une écriture féminine qui cherche à confronter la dialectique mémoire individuelle / mémoire collective aux bouleversements mondiaux (le SIDA, l’après 11 septembre, les phénomènes de diaspora).
À partir de ces textes qui associent hybridité générique et hybridité genrée, il s’agira de montrer que les récits caribéens féminins proposent un Autre de la théorie postcoloniale et / ou féministe (French Theory, Judith Butler, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak).

Ecrits romanesques antillais féminins et la question de l’indianité: une comparaison transcoloniale

2009-10-13T11:59:00.005+01:00

Véronique Bragard (Université Catholique de Louvain)

Dans ses recherches sur plusieurs romans francophones antillais de l’engagisme, Valérie Magdelaine-Andrianjafitrimo (CNRS) envisage cette écriture ethnographique, voir paralittéraire, comme une réparation de la perte de l’Inde. Elle considère ces romans ‘ratés’ « à l’imagination sans imagination » telles autant de vignettes ethnotextuelles visant à reconstruire la composante indienne avec l’élément créole. Selon elle, ces récits des Kala Pani révèlent combien aux Antilles, les Indiens n’ont pas véritablement eu de possibilité d’expression littéraire et ont été marginalisés par un discours très assimilationniste. Prenant son analyse comme point de départ, je souhaiterais établir une comparaison entre deux romans de ce corpus francophone (Minatchy-Bogat, Terre d’exil et d’adoption (2001) et Laure Moutoussamy, Le Kooli de Morne Cabri (2007), et deux romans de langue anglaise écrits eux aussi par des descendantes d’engagés indiens (Ramabai Espinet The Swinging Bridge (2003) et Shani Mootoo, He Drown She in the Sea (2006)). D’une part, je souhaiterais prolonger la discussion commencée par Valérie Magdelaine-Andrianjafitrimo et tenter de voir si les romans anglophones cherchent également à écrire une histoire collective et personnelle d’une généalogie perdue ou si ces derniers s’en détachent complètement et comment, et d’autre part examiner si les politiques coloniales françaises et anglaises ont pu jouer un rôle différent dans les deux ères linguistiques de la Caraïbe. Ma communication s’attellera en conséquence à explorer dans les quatre romans en question les personnages dans leur « mimicry » (Bhabha) et relations interculturelles ainsi que les éléments culturels qui marquent un retour du discours des origines.

Myth as "Metaphora" of Presence in S. Heaney, D. LeGenre, and D. Walcott’s Opera, “The Burial at Thebes”

2009-10-13T11:59:00.004+01:00

Victoria Bridges Moussaron (Université de Charles de Gaulle)

Abstract: Sophocles’ tragedy, “Antigone,” has been translated across times and cultures into Anouilh’s absurd, Brecht’s Nazi Germany, Heaney’s Dublin, Leroy’s Haitian Creole, its Greek dimension of “awe” becoming crainte/fear or unheimlich/the uncanny, always recounting the same “myth” of forgotten origins, the rite of an “urge to record…anguish,” raising Benjamin’s question: do we translate to say the “same” thing again?

Walcott has “translated” the rhythm of “Piers Plowman” in “The Schooner Flight,” Homer’s Odyssey into a play, but the articulation of the same and difference must be thought in terms of his conception of history: if linear “history is the nightmare I am trying to awaken from” (Joyce), “there is no history, only the history of emotion” wherein “the past and the present are piercingly fixed.” He would re-situate, would “articulate an encounter” (Bhabha) so as to “startle” subjugation. There is a politics to his poetics raising the question of how a metaphor moves us.

In “The Burial of Thebes,” the vehicle that Walcott uses, metaphora, literally “a bus,” is not the text so much as décor: the seal of the Dominican Republic, of Haiti’s “Manichean history,” military uniforms and Duvallier metropolitan suits - Creon now appears as a Caribbean dictator; titles: the Chorus is a “Cabinet” of Ministers: “Information,” “Culture,” “The Admiralty;” and a dancer, perhaps voodoo, re-introduced, who periodically figures the inexplicable. Décor, titles, a dancer, finally very little, as was true of Greek tragedies: “there can be virtue in depravation” (Nobel Address). It is then a question his drama’s poetics: the “amnesia” of the Middle Passage and the “valid” difference of the local, neither mimicry of the other Archipelago, nor just the “suspension of disbelief” (Ubersfeld), but an “enactment of remorse” felt anew, Yeats’ ephemeral, if you will, a re-presencing of timeless tragedy.

Sucre amer que se repite: un imaginaire visuel d’une histoire caribéenne commune

2009-10-13T11:58:00.002+01:00

Ute Fendler (Université de Bayreuth)

La plantation est reconnue comme un élément constitutif commun aux pays de la Caraïbe, comme Antonio Benítez Rojo l’a montré dans La isla que se repite ou Edouard Glissant dans ses poétiques. Dans les expressions caribéennes se dessine ainsi un « imaginaire de la plantation » qui fait jouer les motifs de la fuite, la rébellion ou encore la figure du nègre marron. L’idée que ces motifs historiques soient constitutifs d’une identité caribéenne transgressant les frontières linguistiques et nationales se manifeste dans la récurrence des thèmes historiques abordés par les œuvres produites dans l’espace Caraïbe ainsi que par la reprise de ces motifs pour les lier à l’actualité sociale et politique. Le dynamisme de cet espace Caraïbe nourri d’un imaginaire de la plantation se manifeste également dans les œuvres filmiques, qui restent moins connues que les productions littéraires. Les cinéastes visent à mettre en images précisément les motifs et les mythes caribéens mentionnés ci-dessus. Deux types de narration se laissent distinguer : celle qui tente d’illustrer (de mettre en images) le passé dans le but de construire un imaginaire et une mémoire communs et celle qui vise à mettre à jour les mécanismes sous-jacents d’un système de domination, d’oppression et de contrôle. Un film de fiction comme Sucre Amer du Martiniquais Christian Lara fait surtout revivre l’histoire. Ces images trouvent un écho dans La última cena du Cubain Tomas Gutierrez Alea, même s’il ne s’agit pas d’une simple illustration de l’histoire, mais plutôt d’une analyse des mécanismes du système esclavagiste comme base de la société de plantation. Les images se répètent encore dans Barroco du Mexicain Paul Leduc, qui tente de retracer cette rencontre forcée de cultures dans une perspective diachronique.

Ces films serviront comme corpus de base qui permettra d’analyser la construction d’un imaginaire commun de l’histoire de la Caraïbe à partir de cette répétition de motifs et d’images qui accentuent les parallèles et les constantes d’une île à l’autre. Au-delà de ce fond commun, les démarches esthétiques varient considérablement, car pour les cinéastes, il ne s’agit pas uniquement de visualiser (montrer / mettre en scène) cette époque historique, mais encore de proposer une lecture de l’histoire qui mette au jour (fasse ressortir) les continuités dans le temps et dans l’espace car il ne s’agit pas uniquement de mettre en scène cette époque historique, mais les cinéastes tentent de donner une lecture de cette histoire qui permettrait de voir les continuités dans le temps et l’espace. Enfin le cinéaste haïtien Charles Najman reprend tous ces éléments et semble les mettre en question dans son film Royal bonbon, car si l’on trouve encore dans cette œuvre la volonté de se souvenir de l’histoire, le cinéaste illustre en outre les répercussions de cette histoire sur le présent tout en questionnant les mythes fondateurs de la rébellion, du marronnage face à une actualité dérisoire.

Why a “Queer” Caribbean Anthology, and Why Now?

2009-10-13T11:57:00.001+01:00

Thomas Glave (Universidade: Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

This paper will explore and explicate the ways in which Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Thomas Glave, ed.; Duke University Press, 2008) originated, why it has been viewed by so many as such an “unprecedented” text (which it in fact is), and the ways in which its presence can contribute to – and significantly impact – the literary, intellectual, and political landscapes of the (black, brown, yellow, and white) Caribbean and its diasporas. Among the questions to be considered: in speaking of reconfiguring and reimagining the region known today as the “Caribbean,” what challenges can a queer Caribbean anthology present across cultural scenarios in which notions about “black”-ness as an identity have sometimes been (mis-)used as racial and cultural “authenticity” measures in nationalist, sometimes xenophobic movements? What challenges might this text present in Caribbean contexts in which extant queer theory (authored primarily by non-Caribbean scholars and writers), is infrequently invoked in discussion of the region’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender writers, such as Dionne Brand, Michelle Cliff, H. Nigel Thomas, Patricia Powell? What sort of reconfiguring and reimagining might occur, by way of this text, given the fact that silence about same-gender sexual pleasure in the Caribbean region obtains more often than open, non-shaming discussions about same-gender sexual expression in a region where both fundamentalist religions and fiercely monitored gender norms continue to weigh heavily in public discourse? Might this anthology engender entirely new ways of discussing and viewing gender and sexuality in the region? This paper will explore these questions and more.

“This Those Slaves Must Have Known Who Were My Mothers”: Women Who Live By Their Own Rules in Dionne Brand’s "Land to Light On"

2009-10-13T11:56:00.001+01:00

Shoshannah Ganz ((Laurentian University, Sudbury)

and Stephanie McKenzie (Sir Wilfred Grenfell College)

Originally from Trinidad, award-winning poet Dionne Brand writes extensively about a sense of self and finding a place for self expression amongst both receptive and non-receptive audiences in her now claimed home of Canada. In particular, as her poetic collection Land to Light On (1997) and her critical prose in A Map to the Door of No Return (2001) reveals, the self must negotiate a space by theoretically examining and negotiating with communities and their welcoming and unwelcoming manners and by poetically carving out niches in between such theoretical examinations. In blending literary criticism with poetry we attempt to determine what values theory and poetry serve and the manner in which different articulations (creative and theoretical) help create safe and embracing zones for the individual who must confront racism, homophobia and sexism.

As an assistant professor in the English Department at Laurentian University, Shoshannah Ganz will examine the critical theories which inform Brand's work. As a poet and assistant professor at Memorial University, Stephanie McKenzie will engage with Ganz's theoretical comments by responding in poetic form. Such a mixed focus is amenable, we feel, to an examination of Brand's work as Brand is both a theorist and poet who blends different genres and approaches to examine the plight of the fragmented individual.

Writing from Diaspora: Displacement and Dilemma of Black Caribbeans in England

2009-10-13T11:55:00.002+01:00

Sunday Bamisile (Faculdade de Letras Universidade de Lisboa)

This essay examines the nature and complexity of problems facing black Caribbeans in England as portrayed in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoner and C.L.R James’s Letter from England. Using George Eric Lamming’s - The Pleasure of Exile and Frantz Fanon’s - Black Skin, White Masks for our theoretical foundation, we shall focus on the representation of blacks and their inter-relationship with white characters in the two literary texts. Special emphasise will be paid to the question of displacement, dilemma of black and its effects on the female characters. We concluded that the black Caribbeans analysed in these novels are lonely and are considered as second class citizens and due to the fact that they are far away from the pleasure, emotional support and psychological freedom of home.

Sunday Adetunji Bamisile is a doctoral candidate of Literary and Comparative Studies at the University of Lisbon, Lisbon-Portugal. He holds a B.A. Hons.in Afro and Luso-Brazilian Literatures from Obafemi Awolowo University, ife Nigeria, a Postgraduate Higher Diploma in Teaching of Portuguese as a Foreign Language from Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Porto, and a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa. His doctoral research-in-progress focuses on “The Question of Gender and Creativity in Contemporary African Literature and African Literature in Diaspora.” He has published articles on Postcolonial, Afro and Luso–Brazilian Literatures and Feminism. Bamisile is a critic and literary theorist and a staunch follower of feminist ideology. His other area of interest includes Postcolonial Studies, Portuguese, Brazilian, African and Comparative literatures.