Gender: Male Religion:Quaker Race or Ethnicity: Multiracial Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation:Activist, Author
Nationality: United States Executive summary: “President” of the Underground Railroad
Abolitionist Robert Purvis was born to a half-white half-black woman, and his father was a white man from England. His father settled in South Carolina but never owned slaves and became an outspoken abolitionist. As a young man, Purvis was befriended by anti-slavery activist Benjamin Lundy, and at his father’s death Purvis inherited a substantial sum, about $120,000. He attended Amherst College, where he was expelled over a prank, the nature of which has been lost to history. His skin was light enough that he could easily have passed for white, but he instead dedicated his life to securing freedom for slaves, often at his own peril.
He married abolitionist Harriet Forten Purvis, and their home became a vital waystation for escaped slaves on the way to freedom in Canada and elsewhere, and Purvis was unofficially hailed as “President of the Underground Railroad”. Records of such activities were, of course, scant, but Purvis once estimated that over the course of thirty years until slavery was abolished in America, an average of one escaped slave daily ate or slept in his home — which would mean that nearly 11,000 newly-freed souls found refuge under his roof.
He was founding member of William Lloyd Garrison‘s American Antislavery Society in Philadelphia, and established the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons, encouraging literacy and learning. He was a proponent and practitioner of what was called the “free produce” movement, insisting that no food be served in his home if slaves had been involved in its cultivation. Also active in his support for women’s rights, he was the first Vice President of the Woman’s Suffrage Society, while Lucretia Mott was the group’s President.
When Pennsylvania proposed barring out-of-state free blacks from settling in the state, Purvis chaired the committee that assembled Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disfranchisement, and spoke widely on African-Americans’ accomplishments and contributions to the state’s economic and cultural strength. Purvis’s Appeal was for decades among the most widely-read and influential abolitionist documents.
After his home was repeatedly beset by angry white mobs, Purvis moved from Philadelphia to a quieter adjacent town, Byberry (ironically now part of Philadelphia). In 1853 the town of Byberry banned black children from school, but when Purvis — one of the town’s richest citizens — announced that he would respond by refusing to pay his taxes, the town’s exclusionary edict was almost immediately reversed.
After the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, he wrote that he owed no allegiance to a nation that held that blacks had “no rights a white man was bound to respect”. With the outbreak of the US Civil War, he called for widespread black enlistment in the Union Army, and after President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Purvis stated unequivocally, “I am proud to be an American citizen”.
Father: William Purvis (cotton broker, d. 1826 typhus) Mother: Harriet Judah Purvis Brother: William Purvis (b. 1806, d. 1828 tuberculosis) Brother: Joseph Purvis (b. 1812, d. 1857) Wife:Harriet Forten Purvis (abolitionist, b. 1810, d. 1875) Son: William P. Purvis (b. 1832, d. 1857) Son: Robert Purvis Jr. (b. 1834, d. 1862) Son: Joseph Parrish Purvis (b. 1836, d. 1851) Daughter: Harriet Purvis (b. 1839, d. 1905) Son:Charles Burleigh Purvis (physician, b. 14-Apr-1842, d. 30-Jan 30-1929) Son: Henry William Purvis (b. 1844, d. 28-Sep-1907) Son: Granville Sharp Purvis (b. 1846, d. 1907) Daughter: Georgianna Purvis (b. 1848, d. 1877)
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
As we have moved into a primary cycle and the subject of the working class is on the lips of activists and politicians, I know the images that term evokes in the minds-eye of many who hear it—hard hats, lunch boxes and assembly lines—often male, and often white. Organized labor and unions get mentioned, but rarely when one thinks of unions, other than perhaps SEIU or organized teachers do we think of women.
Many of you know I went to an annual women’s gathering this weekend where I also celebrated my birthday. Hosted by one of my sisters from the Young Lords Party who is a union organizer, the gathering consists of mainly women of color, who are activists, and artist-activists from different age sets. Some of us have been attending for years. This year a sister I’ve wanted to meet for many years was there. We had never met, though we are both in the same film, “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry,” which documents the second wave of feminism, and we know many of the same people.
I wanted you to meet her too. Her name is Linda Burnham, and she is the National Research Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Linda Burnham has worked for decades as an activist, writer, strategist, and organizational consultant focused on women’s rights and anti-racism. Most recently she has been serving as the National Research Coordinator of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and prior to that, she provided organizational consulting to Domestic Workers United and facilitated the Gender Justice from the Grassroots Inter-Alliance Dialogue gathering in March 2010.Linda Burnham is a co-founder and former executive director of the Women of Color Resource Center. The Women of Color Resource Center is a community-based organization that links activists with scholars and provides information and analysis on the social, political and economic issues that most affect women of color. Burnham founded the center to provide a strong institutional base for an agenda that recognizes the crucial interconnections between anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic organizing.
Burnham was a leader in the Third World Women’s Alliance, an organization that grew out of a women’s caucus in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and that, early on, challenged the women’s movement to incorporate issues of race and class into the feminist agenda. She has participated in conferences and meetings with women in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Cuba, returning with insights about the global factors that affect women’s status and the unique ways in which women organize to create change in their communities.
Talking with Linda was exhilarating, and as with most black Americans, we have a shared history of domestic workers in our family trees. I was reminded that it has been a while since I’ve written about the work being done organizing for the rights of domestic and home care workers, a struggle she has played a major role in. She spoke of her respect for the leadership of Ai-jen Poo.
Ai-jen Poo is the Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Co-director of the Caring Across Generations campaign. She is a 2014 MacArthur fellow and was named one of Time 100’s world’s most influential people in 2012. She began organizing immigrant women workers nearly two decades ago. In 2000 she co-founded Domestic Workers United, the New York organization that spearheaded the successful passage of the state’s historic Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010.
How many domestic workers are there in the U.S.? According to the report (published in 2012) :
The domestic work labor force is large and growing. The Census Bureau’s annual survey, the American Community Survey [ACS], finds that, from 2004 to 2010, the number of nannies, housecleaners, and caregivers working in private households and directly paid by their employers rose from 666,435 to 726,437, an increase of nearly 10 percent.The actual number of domestic workers undoubtedly is far higher. These ACS figures do not take into account workers who are hired through placement agencies or those who work for private cleaning companies. Nor do they count some types of workers who could be considered domestic workers, such as cooks or chauffeurs. Furthermore, categorical overlap and fluidity complicates how domestic workers are counted. For example, a caregiver to an elderly person might perform many of the same functions as a home health aide, and vice versa.
We also may reasonably presume that domestic workers, a sector of the population with a large proportion of undocumented immigrants, are undercounted in the ACS due to reluctance on the part of many to share information with governmental entities, and because of language barriers. Researchers have confirmed that the Census Bureau undercounts undocumented immigrants for these reasons, as well as other inadequacies in data collection methods.
Ai-jen Poo states that in the United States there are somewhere between one and two million domestic workers, “depending on who you ask, and how you count.”
Domestic workers are critical to the US economy. They help families meet many of the most basic physical, emotional, and social needs of the young and the old. They help to raise those who are learning to be fully contributing members of our society. They provide care and company for those whose working days are done, and who deserve ease and comfort in their older years. While their contributions may go unnoticed and uncalculated by measures of productivity, domestic workers free the time and attention of millions of other workers, allowing them to engage in the widest range of socially productive pursuits with undistracted focus and commitment. The lives of these workers would be infinitely more complex and burdened absent the labor of the domestic workers who enter their homes each day. Household labor, paid and unpaid, is indeed the work that makes all other work possible.Despite their central role in the economy, domestic workers are often employed in substandard jobs. Working behind closed doors, beyond the reach of personnel policies, and often without employment contracts, they are subject to the whims of their employers. Some employers are terrific, generous, and understanding. Others, unfortunately, are demanding, exploitative, and abusive. Domestic workers often face issues in their work environment alone, without the benefit of co-workers who could lend a sympathetic ear.
The social isolation of domestic work is compounded by limited federal and state labor protections for this workforce. Many of the laws and policies that govern pay and conditions in the workplace simply do not apply to domestic workers. And even when domestic workers are protected by law, they have little power to assert their rights.
Domestic workers’ vulnerability to exploitation and abuse is deeply rooted in historical, social, and economic trends. Domestic work is largely women’s work. It carries the long legacy of the devaluation of women’s labor in the household. Domestic work in the US also carries the legacy of slavery with its divisions of labor along lines of both race and gender. The women who perform domestic work today are, in substantial measure, immigrant workers, many of whom are undocumented, and women of racial and ethnic minorities. These workers enter the labor force bearing multiple disadvantages.
The governor signed Senate Bill 552 on Wednesday extending provisions for overtime pay, rest periods, paid personal time off and protections against sexual harassment and retaliation to an estimated 10,000 domestic workers in Oregon. The measure passed the Senate in late April and the House in early June, making Oregon the fifth state to offer basic protections to a class of workers who historically have been excluded from federal and state labor laws.Since 2010, New York, California, Hawaii and Massachusetts, working with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, have passed laws guaranteeing similar rights.
Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, chief sponsor of the Oregon bill, said it was the right thing to do, noting that 95 percent of domestic workers are women and many are immigrants and many are people of color. A similar bill passed the Oregon House two years ago but stalled in the Senate, she said. “Now domestic workers will be able to adequately provide for their own families, and finally be protected for the valuable work that they do,” Gelser said. “And employers who hire domestic workers will have a standard to look towards which will help to ensure quality care for their families.”
The new law takes effect January 1, 2016, and directs the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries to adopt rules to implement it.
Five states. That’s only 10% at this point. We have to do better. I honor the women who have fought so long and hard for these gains, but as you can see we have a long way to go.
In Colombo, the sweltering capital of Sri Lanka, the Domestic Workers Union is picketing outside the Supreme Court.Sarath Abrew, a high-ranking judge, has been accused of sexually assaulting a chambermaid, fracturing her skull and leaving her for dead. The protesters are not only demanding justice, but also new laws to safeguard their rights. In an exploitative industry, this can’t be just another day – the violence has to stop.Right now, there are 53 million people working as domestics in countries all over the globe, amounting to 1.7% of the world’s employed. Of this group, 83% are female, which means 1 in 13 wage-earning women is in domestic work. More worryingly, so are 17.2 million children, many too young to give informed consent. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that domestic workers earn less than 50% of the average salary of any particular nation. This means that workers in the developing world could earn a salary lower than $8,000 a year or, worse still, no salary at all. Job titles include housemaid, servant, cook, gardener, governess, babysitter or care-giver. We rarely use the term ‘slave’ but in many cases this is effectively what the workers are.
The ILO recently warned of the ‘invisibility’ of domestic work. The reality is much more damaging than poor pay and long hours. Many employees have no legal protection and are often given unlawful contracts, unfair terms and unethical job descriptions. They are perilously close to being victims of crime or destitution.
Domestic work is essential work, but because so many of these jobs are done by women, both their labor and lives are devalued.
Support the Domestic Workers Alliance to help carry the struggle forward.
Screenshot of “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez,” which screened at the BlackStar Film Festival on August 1, 2015. Provided by BlackStar Film Festival to Colorlines
Four years after its inception, the Philadelphia-based BlackStar Film Festival has confirmed its reputation as a black Sundance, an independent powerhouse of a film festival where film and criticism powerhouses such as Spike Lee and Marc Lamont Hill converge with burgeoning artists over panels and screenings that celebrate the vitality of independent film from the African diaspora.* This year’s festival, which begins today and runs until Sunday, August 2, is no different. Featuring appearances from acclaimed indie filmmakers such as Arthur Jafa and Terrance Nance, BlackStar 2015 promises to uphold the standards it’s previously set in empowering black artists in a film world that isn’t always quick to recognize artists of colors’ potential.
We scoured this year’s program guide and picked five documentaries worth highlighting. For those lucky enough to pass through Philadelphia this weekend, check out these showings. For everybody else, keep an eye out for these films in theaters, other film festivals, on demand, on Netflix or wherever else they land. Their profiles will only grow after Sunday.
Given the long history of political turmoil between Haiti and its neighbor, The Dominican Republic, “La Belle Vie” is an important and timely documentary to watch. Shot prior to the Dominican Republic’s current expulsion of Haitians born there, Haitian-American filmmaker Rachelle Salnave explores her identity and relationship with Haiti through a trip to the country as it wrestles with endemic poverty and the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that forever altered the country’s fortunes. “La Belle Vie” is preceded by two short films also rooted in Haiti.
Those who really want to dig into the future of black independent filmmaking should look not just toward films created, but the ideologically-driven studios designed to elevate the art. This conceptual drive guided the creation of TNEG by director/cinematographer Arthur Jafa (“Crooklyn,” “Dreams Are Colder Than Death”), director/cinematographer Malik Sayeed (“He Got Game,” “Belly”) and producer/curator Elissa Blount-Moorhead (Weeksville Heritage Center, The Contemporary). This emergent film studio adapts the production models of legendary studios like Motown and Pixar, with the express aim of creating black cinema “capable of matching the power, beauty and alienation of black music.” Among the six shorts being screened at BlackStar (followed by a conversation with Jafa and Blount-Moorhead) is “New Soul Rebel: Adrian Younge,” which focuses on the work and philosophy of the innovative soul producer whose work you may have heard in “Black Dynamite.”
Screenshot from “Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee.” Provided by BlackStar Film Festival to Colorlines
Few black film figures loomed as large as Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. “Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee” will be an important contribution to their legacy of excellence and activism. Directed by their grandson Muta’Ali Muhammad, this documentary digs deep into the couple’s life and functions as both a reference guide for future generations of artist-activists and a testament to family.
This year’s festival closer deals with a topic whose public visibility, while growing, still remains tragically in the shadows. “Treasure: From Tragedy to Trans Justice, a Detroit Story” looks at the life of Shelly “Treasure” Hillard, a young trans woman of color whose murder was not tried as a hate crime, as well as the struggle of her mother to achieve justice for her daughter and community.
1) “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez” by Barbara Attie,
Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon
Screenshot of “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez,” which screened at the BlackStar Film Festival on August 1, 2015. Provided by BlackStar Film Festival to Colorlines
We predict that this film, given its tremendous subject and bevy of featured guests (Questlove, Talib Kweli and the aforementioned Ruby Dee among them), will be the one to go furthest after BlackStar. “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez” is a poignant look at the life and career of legendary writer, spoken word progenitor and Black Arts Movement figure Sonia Sanchez. The documentary chronicles Sanchez’s eight decades of creative development and incendiary influence, addressing both her early contributions and her ongoing role in ensuring black literature’s centrality in university curricula.
The BlackStar Film Festival begins today, July 30, and closes on Sunday, August 2. Click here to learn more about BlackStar, and check back on Colorlines next week for interviews with select artists from the festival.
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*Editorial note: Akiba Solomon, Colorlines’ editorial director, serves on BlackStar’s advisory board and contributed a piece to this year’s festival program.
Red and blue came together in this structured improvisation from legendary dancer Bill T. Jones, cellist Joshua Roman and vocalist Somi. The title: “The Red Circle and the Blue Curtain.” The red circle is the TED carpet. The blue curtain refers to Isadora Duncan’s favorite backdrop for her own dance improvisations a century ago. Photo: Bret Hartman/TED
Three artists. One five-minute performance. Less than 48 hours.No, this is not a math problem. It was the scenario presented to choreographer Bill T. Jones, cellist Joshua Roman and vocalist Somi at the start of the TED2015 conference. June Cohen, TED’s executive producer of media, offered a challenge to these three: Could they craft a structured improvisation to perform … on Wednesday?
Cohen was curating a session that day called Creative Ignition. “The session already highlighted a wide range of creative thinkers and doers, but I wanted to find a way to illuminate the creative process by showing instead of telling,” she says. “I was hoping this piece would spark the audience to think about the ways in which structured improvisation and cross-disciplinary collaboration could advance their own work.”
The three artists, who had never performed together (indeed, Jones and Roman had never met), had about two days to create the structure for the piece, from conception to presentation.
On Tuesday morning, Roman and Somi — both TED Fellows — headed off to what they expected to be a rehearsal room in the Vancouver Convention Center. It turned out to be a storage closet. “I walked in and there were guys placing orders for equipment supplies,” says Roman. But the workers were quick to welcome the unexpected arrivals, and helped them set up a workspace. “We moved the tables and boxes to make room for Bill to move,” says Roman.
No mirrors, no windows. Only an upright piano remained in the middle of the room. Jones brought his partner, Bjorn Amelan, with him. Amelan provided the only outside feedback that Jones, Roman and Somi would get before performing in front of the 1,300-person TED audience and seven cameras.
This privacy was important to their process. “We allowed ourselves to go into some pretty fun and funky places as a way of getting to know each other; as a way of exploring the boundaries and the limits of what it is we were about to do,” Roman remembers. “We let ourselves become very vulnerable with each other.”
So where do three artists, who have never worked together before and have a TED Talk to create, begin?
They started by marking out the stage. Roman and Somi sat on the far sides of the space, facing in to frame the area where Jones would dance. Jones suggested opening with classical roots, so they decided that Roman would perform a Bach prelude. Somi learned the melody to the vocal companion, the Gounod “Ave Maria.”
The group put those first few bars on a repeating loop. Then Jones asked Roman and Somi to shift the music back and forth and create a sonic relationship. “We sort of passed sound between us,” Somi remembers. “After a several minutes, it felt almost meditative. It inspired deep connection between all of us.”
The piece evolved from there. “Improv is a wonderful way to get to know people. You see so much about their musical and organizational ability,” says Roman.
This improvisational spirit led Bill T. Jones to a muse. “I chose Isadora Duncan for this TED intervention because she is for me a sort of ‘ur-presence’ espousing the creed of spontaneity — the notion that creativity comes from a deep interior region,” the choreographer says.
Bill T. Jones coaxes vocalist Somi during their performance at TED2015. The group created a language to give the piece both structure and spontaneity. Photo: Bret Hartman
Duncan famously danced in front of a blue curtain — which Jones thought would match the TED red circle. This pairing of shapes and colors informed the performance. Roman says, “As this process unfolded, we developed a language structure … We decided that one of the most basic and easily communicable things was Bill’s position in relation to Somi and myself.”
Jones framed the performance as a circle, laid out between Somi and Roman — where the red carpet would be on the stage. This circle formed the road map for the improvisation. “Certain points in that circle represented where we might introduce some kind of change, without dictating beforehand what type of change it would be,” says Roman.
The next day in the TED theater, Jones, Roman and Somi put their experiment into practice. Jones set the scene for the audience as “a morning in Vancouver in 2015.” Reiterating the signals the three developed, he sprang from the front of the stage to Roman at the cello, receded back to the blue curtain and turned his open palms to prompt Somi’s haunting scat singing.
Their language structure explains the mesmerizing synchronicity that Jones, Roman and Somi found onstage. Each performers’ electric attention was palpable as they took the lead. Jones coaxed and coached Roman and Somi, egging them on: “Are we there yet? I don’t think so.”
In the TED video, released this week, it looks as if Jones is unlocking something as he dances. That’s not far from the experience that the two TED Fellows describe. “Bill has this beautiful way of getting us out of our individual selves and into the collective shared energy,” Somi says.
Joshua Roman played a Bach prelude for this performance. It’s “a style that Bach would have improvised,” he says. Photo: Bret Hartman
“He’s one of those artists who provokes in a very thoughtful and meaningful way. He’s not bound by the traditional boxes, but definitely supported by them,” says Roman. “He’s not about leaving the past behind — he’s about exploring it.”
Surprisingly, Jones doesn’t plan to watch the video. “Though I relish the notion that many will be able to see this, I don’t want to disturb the memory of that experience,” he says. “I trust the public will get a whiff of what transpired between the three of us.”
Cohen, who commissioned the collaboration, was thrilled with the final result. “What we got was far beyond what we could have hoped for. This performance was different for me than anything else that happened at TED,” she says. “Most of what happens on the TED stage is curation. This was more like alchemy.”
In a way, this is a great metaphor for TED as a whole. “TED is best described as a catalyst,” says Cohen. “The event brings together extraordinary people — both on the stage and in the audience.The event brings together extraordinary people — both on the stage and in the audience. Then we step back and watch what happens. Many beautiful and important collaborations have been born at TED; this one played out on stage.”
This performance was alchemy in action, showing the creative process as it catalyzed in the moment. Photo: Bret Hartman
The Yale Drama Series is seeking submissions for its 2016 playwriting competition. The winning play will be selected by the series’ current judge, distinguished playwright Nicholas Wright. The winner of this annual competition will be awarded the David Charles Horn Prize of $10,000, publication of his/her manuscript by Yale University Press, and a staged reading at Lincoln Center Theater. The prize and publication are contingent on the playwright’s agreeing to the terms of the publishing agreement.
There is no entry fee. Please follow these guidelines in preparing your manuscript:
1. This contest is restricted to plays written in the English language. Worldwide submissions are accepted.
2. Submissions must be original, unpublished full-length plays written in English. Translations, musicals, adaptations, and children’s plays are not accepted. The Yale Drama Series is intended to support emerging playwrights. Playwrights may win the competition only once.
3. Playwrights may submit only one manuscript per year.
4. Plays that have been professionally produced or published are not eligible. Plays that have had a workshop, reading, or non-professional production or that have been published as an actor’s edition will be considered.
5. Plays may not be under option, commissioned, or scheduled for professional production or publication at the time of submission.
6. Plays must be typed/word-processed, page-numbered, and in standard professional play format.
7. The Yale Drama Series reserves the right to reject any manuscript for any reason.
8. The Yale Drama Series reserves the right of the judge to not choose a winner for any given year of the competition and reserves the right to determine the ineligibility of a winner, in keeping with the spirit of the competition, and based upon the accomplishments of the author.
ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS:
The Yale Drama Series Competition strongly urges electronic submission. By electronically submitting your script, you will receive immediate confirmation of your successful submission and the ability to check the status of your entry.
Electronic submissions for the 2016 competition must be submitted no earlier than June 1, 2015 and no later than August 15, 2015. The submission window closes at midnight EST.
If you are submitting your play electronically, please omit your name and contact information from your manuscript. The manuscript must begin with a title page that shows the play’s title, a 2-3 sentence keynote description of the play, a list of characters, and a list of acts and scenes. Please enter the title of your play, your name and contact information (including address, phone number, and email address), and a brief biography where indicated in the electronic submission form.
The Yale Drama Series Competition strongly urges applicants to submit their scripts electronically, but if that is impossible, we will accept hard copies.
Submissions for the 2016 competition must be postmarked no earlier than June 1, 2015 and no later than August 15, 2015.
If you are submitting a hard copy of your play, the manuscript must begin with a title page that shows the play’s title and your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address (if you have one), page count, and (if applicable) a list of acknowledgments; and a second title page that lists the title of the play only, a 2-3 sentence keynote description of the play, a list of characters, and a list of acts and scenes. Please include a brief biography at the end of the manuscript, on a separate page.
Do not bind or staple the manuscript.
Do not send the only copy of your work. Manuscripts cannot be returned after the competition. If you wish receipt of your manuscript to be acknowledged, please include an email address on your title page or a stamped, self-addressed postcard.
Send the manuscript to Yale Drama Series, P.O. Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520-9040.
CONTACT US
For more information regarding the Yale Drama Series please write to us at:
Yale Drama Series P.O. Box 209040 New Haven, CT 06520-9040
The Caribbean has always been the site of global interactions and transactions. Movements from one place to the other across diverse geographic locations and spaces (from island to island, the circum-Caribbean and from the region to continental locations) have played an important role in the dissemination of ideas and sharing of cultural practices from the indigenous people’s pre-Columbian experience to the contemporary Caribbean. Haitian scholar Michel Rolph Trouillot has argued in Global Transformations, that the Caribbean has long been global with its “massive flow of goods, peoples, information, and capital across huge areas of the earth’s surface in ways that make the parts dependent on the whole” (2003: 47). This conference will establish a cross-disciplinary and trans-lingual encounter that will reinforce the intellectual integration of various linguistic and spatial locations of the Caribbean. It will be also an occasion to have much needed conversation about the vital contributions of Haiti to the region and the world, particularly in terms of history of resistance, knowledge production, and the arts.
The theme of the 2016 conference – Caribbean Global Movements: People, Ideas, Culture, Arts and Economic Sustainability – proposes a focus on the various movements that identify the Caribbean as located firmly in the global currents, while also repositioning questions of knowledge and sustainability. It also offers a space to think through the centrality of Haiti in these movements and how we can envision and plan future movements. It is expected that the conference will give the opportunity to showcase the history, wealth and diversity of Haitian scholarship (institutional and independent), which has contributed to unconventional and needed responses to issues facing the country and the larger Caribbean. Overall, this conference will examine how Caribbean global movements operate, as people, ideas, and cultural arts from the Caribbean continue to have transnational impact.
We are inviting scholarly papers, workshops, and roundtable proposals from individuals spanning the broadest disciplinary and methodological range whose work focuses upon the Caribbean and its Diaspora. We welcome submissions that engage the complexities of the region, particularly in terms of the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality, religion, etc. We are also very interested in workshop and roundtable proposals that offer engaged discussion in any of the proposed topic areas with a focus on solutions and models for change. We invite artists of all kinds to submit work for consideration in the visual and performance arts track and the film track – more specific calls for submissions will be circulated.
We will be giving priority to fully constituted panels, in particular ones that are multi-disciplinary and multilingual. We welcome submissions and proposals on a range of topics that relate to the overall conference theme within any of these topic areas, such as (but not limited to):
1) Caribbean migrations, including intra-island and circum-Caribbean migrations; theories and impacts of globalisation on Caribbean societies, and contestinginsularity; the CSME and free movement of labour and anti-immigration laws; addressing anti-Haitian sentiments and anti-Black migration across the region.
2) Caribbean development and ideas for sustainable economic integration of the Caribbean; neoliberal policies and the neo-colonial/postcolonial state (violence and control); complications of tourism as the model for development;Caribbean diasporas’ contribution to regional economies; the place of local economies (from informal sectors to small business); climate change impact on Caribbean economies, people and environments.
3) Caribbean labour and social movements; Caribbean domestic and sexual labour within regional and global economies; the politics of disaster relief and humanitarian aid (in Haiti especially); food sovereignty and Caribbean agribusiness; regional industries, infrastructure and production; the politics of labour movements in the region.
4) Caribbean intellectual and socio-political movements — radical intellectual history in relation to philosophy, knowledge production, and Haiti; Caribbean feminisms and grassroots activism; Caribbean men’s movements; social justice and civil society organisations; and education for social change.
5) Caribbean creative imagination and spiritual movements — Caribbean arts and craft as global commodities; internationalization of reggae and Rastafari; Caribbean style, music and dance cultures; Haitian visual art and global cultural circuits; performance and Carnival culture; Afro-Caribbean spirituality and religious movements.
We provide a setting where multi- and inter-disciplinary views are strongly 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. In order to facilitate inter-disciplinary exchange, we encourage our members to propose ideas for papers and panels, by way of contacting others to create multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual panels at our website’s forum. We also encourage members to invite a range of participants, from independent and emerging scholars to well-known scholars, from professionals in industry, politics, etc. to activists, artists, and community-based researchers.
We are re-establishing the CSA practice of sharing abstracts and complete papers at the conference to nourish scholarship and exchange with the plan of publishing (selected) conference proceedings in 2017 (curated and edited by the 2016 conference Program Chairs and CSA 2015-16 President).
Guidelines for Panel/Paper Submissions
All proposals must be submitted electronically via the CSA website (NOT via email). The deadline for individual and panel submissions is October 15, 2015.
Abstracts must not exceed 125 words for individual papers or 250 words for panels.
Titles for individual papers and for panels, roundtables or workshops must not exceed 70 characters (we reserve the right to edit for brevity).
Proposed panels or roundtables should contain at least 3 and no more than 4 presenters, and panel chairperson must be named in the proposal.
Paper titles and abstracts should be submitted in at least one other language besides English (Spanish, French or Haitian Kreyol, Dutch or Papiamento); multilingual abstracts will be published in the electronic version of the program.
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).
Papers/presentations that require special equipment, installation space, rooms, translation services, etc., must be indicated on the submission form.
Workshops should be strategy focused and directly engage in the topic areas, and must include clearly stated outcomes and goals.
Presentations of films and visual and performing arts, as well as related panels, are welcome. Please see the 2016 Film and Visual & Performing Arts Committee Call for Proposals for information and submission instructions.
Membership dues must be paid by January 15, 2016 (as per the CSA constitution, we are returning to annual membership fees by calendar year; therefore annual membership ends 31 December) and Conference Registration must be paid by March 1, 2016 in order for papers/panels to appear in the conference program. Membership and registration details are available on the CSA website.
CSA offers a limited number of travel grants to assist current and potential members who do not have access to any funding from their institutions or countries, and who will not be able to attend the conference without assistance, in exchange for volunteer work during the conference. Additional details about travel grants criteria and applications are available on the CSA website.
For additional information or help with suggested topics, submission forms, author celebration, literary salon, film and arts tracks, and/or translation, please contact the CSA Program Co-Chairs,Marie-JoséNzengou-Tayoand Angelique V. Nixon,at program.chair@caribbeanstudiesassociation.org.
$500, Publication, and a public reading and talk at Drake
University The Freeman Family and the Drake University
Department of English invite you to submit outstanding
unpublished non-fiction essays of up to 3500 words on the
subject [[ THE STUPID LITTLE THING THAT SAVED ME ]].
Students and faculty of Drake University will read all entries and choose the finalists. The winner will be selected by final judge Emily Rapp.
The winner will be awarded $500, published in The Rumpus, and brought to Drake University in February 2016 to read from the winning essay and speak at a public event.
The first annual Payton Prize was won by Tammy Delatorre, whose essay Out of the Swollen Sea was selected by Cheryl Strayed.
There is no fee.
Payton James Freeman was a bright, loving child whose ability to move — even to smile — was stolen by a disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Diagnosed as an infant, Payton was expected to live perhaps six months. Instead he fought for five and a half years as his parents worked with doctors and scientists, fundraising in hopes of a cure. SMA ultimately took his life, but his story lives on in all those who continue striving against uncountable odds, and who struggle to put life’s most complex and trying events into words.
SMA is the #1 genetic killer of children under age two. The Freeman Family would like you to learn about SMA and remember Payton as you submit your essays and as we read and celebrate the winning essay.
HOW TO SUBMIT Submit one essay of up to 3500 words via Submittable. Deadline September 1, 2015. Winner and finalists will be announced in December 2015.
Authors must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and must agree to attend and participate in the reading at Drake University in February 2016 to receive the award. Current students and employees of Drake University, The Rumpus, and/or Emily Rapp are ineligible for the award.
In anticipation of the July 31 release of her upcoming album blood, Lianne La Havas has been steadily blessing us with new singles and some dope remixes. Meanwhile, rappers Tink and Dej Loaf both dropped new projects this week. Plus, we’ve got a great collection of videos and a few freestyles.