Announcement published by Binita Mehta on Wednesday, January 9, 2019 From H-Announce

Type: Conference

Date: January 15, 2019

Location: New York, United States

Subject Fields: American History / Studies, Atlantic History / Studies, Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History / Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS

An “ecotone” initially designates a transitional area between two ecosystems, for example between land and sea. The “Ecotones” program (2015-2019) is a cycle of conferences which aims to borrow this term traditionally used in geography and ecology and to broaden the concept by applying it to other disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. An “ecotone” can thus also be understood as a cultural space of encounters, conflicts, and renewal between several communities (Florence Krall).

The Ecotones 5 conference will include an interdisciplinary study of the wider Caribbean as a space of cultural, historical, geographic, and linguistic diversity, a meeting place of peoples from different corners of the world. Central to this study is the idea that the Caribbean is a dynamic and heterogeneous space that has clearly been shaped by the persistence of colonialism. Colonialism created an exploitative and extractive economy based on forced labor which in turn led to multiple forms of resistance beyond rebellions and revolutions that were endemic throughout the region. Recently, the region’s response to several natural disasters has also demonstrated multiple forms of resilience. 

These forms of resistance and resilience can be seen in the wide array of literary/historical/ social/nationalist movements that came after the end of colonization. Postcolonialism gave rise to movements such as Antillanité and Créolité that stress the multiplicity of the Caribbean experience. More recently, the idea of littérature-monde “echoes antillanité and créolité in that it calls both for an end to French ethnocentrism while advocating for a ‘return to the world’” (Moudileno). This multiplicity is evident in Fernando Ortiz’s use of the term “transculturation” which stressed the merging and converging of cultures. This hybrid nationalism that Ortiz espoused and Albizu Campos epitomized, saw the Caribbean as an area that embodied hybrid postcolonial identities. Ortiz’s “transculturation” is echoed by Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic” which is a singular discrete work that uses the “Atlantic” as a geopolitical unit that carves out a cultural-political space for the discussion/creation of a hybrid Caribbean. Both concepts challenge the centrality of Europe through the use of indigenous languages and cross-cultural imagination.

We invite proposals on a wide range of topics related to Caribbean as listed below, but encourage those that relate to the Caribbean as a space of vulnerability and resilience in light of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, including the repercussions of the massive earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 and the aftermath of more recent hurricanes, Irma and Maria in 2017, that devastated Puerto Rico, Dominica, and Barbuda, among other Caribbean islands. Proposals related to networks and support systems of all kinds among various communities of the Caribbean diaspora in the New York metropolitan area would be of particular interest.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

In History and the Social Sciences

Economics and politics of the Caribbean

The colonial and postcolonial Caribbean

The Regional and Diasporic Caribbean

Gender and Sexualities

Nationalisms

Slavery and Slave revolts

Plantation Culture

Racial and Ethnic Relations

Commemorations

Transculturation

In the Arts, Literature, and the Humanities:

The Literatures of the Caribbean

The Visual Arts

Créolité, Antillanité, Littérature-monde

Center and Periphery

Limbo Gateway

Tropological Revisions

Afropolitanism

Film and Digital Media

Musical Traditions in the Caribbean and the Black Atlantic

In the Sciences

Natural Disasters and the Caribbean

Ecology and the Caribbean

Global warming and the Caribbean

We invite contributors to upload their proposals (a 250-word abstract, title, author’s name, a 150- word bio, and contact) to the conference website:

Each presentation will be 20 minutes (followed by discussion time). A selection of papers will be considered for publication at the conclusion of the series of Ecotones events.

Venue: Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY, USA.

Dates: June 21-22, 2019

Language: English

Deadline for submitting proposals: January 15, 2018

Notification of acceptance: February 15, 2019

Ecotones 5 Organizing Committee

Nada Halloway, Associate Professor of English, Manhattanville College [email protected]

Binita Mehta, Professor of French, Manhattanville College [email protected]

Gregory Swedberg, Professor of History, Manhattanville College [email protected]

Wil Tyrrell, Director, Duchesne Center of Religion and Social Justice, Manhattanville College

[email protected]

Ecotones Program Coordinators

Thomas Lacroix (MIGRINTER, CNRS-Poitiers) [email protected]

Judith Misrahi-Barak (EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)

[email protected]

Maggi Morehouse (Coastal Carolina University) [email protected]Contact Info: 

Binita Mehta, Professor of French, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY 10577Contact Email: [email protected]