CARIBBEAN GLOBAL MOVEMENTS:

PEOPLE, IDEAS, CULTURE, ARTS and

ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY

Hotel Karibe, Pétionville, Haïti, June 5-11, 2016

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-Tayo and Angelique V. Nixon,at program.chair@caribbeanstudiesassociation.org.