The Greater Caribbean Studies Network is proud to announce that a new Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship in Caribbean Literatures, Arts, and Cultures will be launched in the 2020-2021 academic year. Convened by by Professors Marlene Daut, Njelle Hamilton, Anne Garland Mahler, and Charlotte Rogers, the IDF offers funding, mentoring, and enhanced research opportunities to incoming graduate students across the Graduate School. Current graduate students may also be invited to participate in some of the IDF's organized activities, including workshops, conferences, and other events.
For a full description of the fellowship, see http://graduate.as.virginia.edu/caribbean-literatures-arts-and-cultures
The Caribbean archipelago by itself (without including the countries on the Caribbean coasts of South America) comprises 13 sovereign nations and 12 dependent territories. While there are only five official languages of the Caribbean — English, French, Dutch, Haitian Kreyòl, and Spanish — there are 59 living languages. Because of various forms of colonialism, forced migration, slavery, and unfree labor, the Caribbean cultural region is even more vast. Made up of Europeans, indigenous Americans, Africans, and Asians, it stretches from the Caribbean Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Atlantic coasts of Central and South America, to the diasporic communities of cities like Montréal, Miami, New York, Paris, and London.
For these reasons, doctoral students studying the Caribbean must be trained to think across differing and sometimes overlapping histories of colonization and across the varied racial, national, and linguistic discourses that emerged from those histories. Students require mentorship from scholars with expertise not only in several nation states, but also in multiple languages.
The following faculty proposed this theme for an interdisciplinary doctoral fellowship program and are committed to co-mentoring students from a variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. Please contact them with questions about the research cluster or to discuss your research interests.
Professor, African and African-American
Studies
Associate Director, Carter G. Woodson
Institute
Assistant Professor, English and African and
African-American Studies
Associate Professor, Spanish, Italian, &
Portuguese
Assistant Professor, Spanish, Italian, &
Portuguese
The approach of this research cluster, led by scholars with expertise in the Francophone, Hispanophone, Creolophone, and Anglophone Caribbean, will be hemispheric and transatlantic in scope. Fellows will benefit from the presence of many other Caribbean Studies faculty on campus, who form part of UVa’s Greater Caribbean Studies Network. Our aim is to encourage transnational study of Caribbean literatures, arts, and cultures with an eye to the comparative complexity that understanding the history of the Antillean archipelago demands.
Possible areas of study
Artistic creation has often been the chosen method by which Caribbean peoples have imagined, processed, and communicated not only freedom and joy, but the tragic histories and realities of colonialism and empire, along with the experiences of slavery, revolutions, hurricanes, earthquakes, dictatorships, and military occupation. Whether we are considering literature, film, painting and sculpture, political posters, or musical styles, the Caribbean is an apt space for exploring the relationship among history, politics, and artistic creation.
Through the lens of examining artistic production, the projects of our doctoral students will intersect with a variety of other research areas, such as:
- Gender and sexuality
- Migration and diaspora
- Religion and philosophy
- Legacies of slavery and colonialism
- Globalization and inequality
- Race and racism
- Political movements, including Communism, socialism, and democracy
- Empire, translation, and tourism
See more at http://graduate.as.virginia.edu/caribbean-literatures-arts-and-cultures