Description

06

Bibliography

Haiti, its revolution and its culture remain largely unknown or misunderstood in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays seeks to both elucidate aspects of Haitian history and culture and provoke interest in readers and scholars for further research in these fields. Several general guiding questions connect the essays: What were, what are the cultural repercussions of Haiti's revolution, in Haiti and elsewhere? What is the truth of Haiti, its history, its intellectual traditions, its culture? What role has culture played in shaping Haiti's history, and conversely, how has Haiti's history determined, inspired, liberated and restricted Haitian culture and thought? In a land that has constantly relived its past, how can we imagine a Haitian future? Can we rethink history and memory? Can an understanding of post-independence culture and thought point tentatively to a way out of the traps of the past, without effecting a counterproductive forgetting of the revolution? Framed by two essays by Rene Depestre, the chapters offer diverse approaches to these questions: the history of Haitian revolutionary universalism; the idea of the Caribbean's historical lack and its application to Haiti; the relationship between personal and political revolutions in Yanick Lahens's fiction; the attempt to write personal history in Edwidge Danticat's work; the role of Haiti and the revolution in forming ideas of ""race""; the importance of the nineteenth-century Haitian intellectual Antenor Firmin in the development of the discipline of anthropology; the influence of St. Domingue refugees in the genesis of New Orleans jazz; the prevalence of the ""Haytian Fear"" narrative in nineteenth-century Trinidad; and the many and diverse post-independence representations of Toussaint Louverture. This book will be of interest to students and readers of Haitian literature, history and culture, as well as those interested in broader Caribbean studies, postcolonial studies and African-American studies.

Description

02

Bibliography

Rihanna is arguably the most commercially successful Caribbean artist in history. She is Barbadian and has been unwavering in publicly articulating her national and regional belongings. Still, there have been varied responses to Rihannas ascendancy, both in the Barbadian public and Caribbean community at large  responses that reveal as much about our own national/regional anxieties as they do about the artist herself. The cutting edge, boundary-transgressing, cultural icon Rihanna is certainly subject to moralistic scrutiny from her global audiences as well; however, the essays in this collection purposely seek to de-centre the dominance of the Euro-American gaze, focusing instead on considerations of the Caribbean artist and her oeuvre from a Caribbean postcolonial corpus of academic inquiry. To this end, Rihanna: Barbados World Gurl in Global Popular Culture brings together U.S. and Caribbean based scholars to discuss issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture, and economy.

Using the concept of diasporic citizenship as a central theoretical frame, this book intervenes in current questions of national and transnational circuits of exchange as they pertain to the commoditization and movement of culture, knowledge, values, and identity. The contributors- drawing from literature, history, musicology, sociology, cultural studies, feminist, gender, and queer studies, the creative/cultural industries and political science - approach the subjects of Rihanna, globalization, gender and sexuality, commerce, transnationalism, Caribbean regionalism, and Barbadian national identity and development, from different disciplinary and at times radically divergent perspectives. At the same time, the essays collectively work through the limitations, possibilities and promise of our best Caribbean imaginings.

Description

06

Bibliography

Hyacinth Evans' detailed case study of a Jamaican high school, formerly known as a junior secondary high school, breaks new ground. Her research demonstrates the continuing education problem encountered by students and teachers in a two-tiered educational system. The case study is an excellent example of the legacy of colonialism still evident in schooling processes in many of the former British colonies in the south (for example, countries in the Caribbean, Africa and India). Evans provides several solutions for the transformation of schools as places for learning and character development.

Description

06

Bibliography

First published in 1961, Jamaica Talk is a thorough study of the English spoken in Jamaica and, although intended for the general educated reader rather than the linguistic specialist, has a foundation of sound scholarship, which makes it an authoritative classic. The late Professor Cassidy was born and reared in Jamaica and collected most of the material for his book when he was attached to the University College of the West Indies as Fulbright research fellow. There are chapters on the composition of ""Jamaica talk"", on pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. The book is an invaluable reference in all institutions that have language departments, and as a handbook for Jamaicans and for interested visitors to the island.

Description

06

Bibliography

Bricks and Stones from the Past"" is an informative, handsomely illustrated and skilfully written book of hard facts about Jamaica's rich geo-historical heritage. Weaving his way through many intricate branches of knowledge, including archaeology, building construction, chemistry and geology, the author embarks on a journey that takes him through the pages of history and across the island. He examines, analyses and describes the nature and origin and use of various lithic materials and objects, many of which played an important role in the development of the island up to the early part of the twentieth century. With a thorough glossary to assist readers in understanding many of the technical terms, the author records his observations and findings in seven easy-to-read and understand chapters. The numerous illustrations of assorted artefacts and ruins should prove of immense value to collectors, museums, libraries, researchers and schools. This much-needed, pioneering reference is an essential addition to the literature on Jamaica.

Description

06

Bibliography

On 1 January 1804, the revolutionary slaves of Saint Domingue established the first independent black state in the Americas and proclaimed their break with the French Republic. After more than a decade of protracted bloody battles, the only successful slave revolution in world history ended. The richest sugar colony of the New World was reduced to ashes, and of the troops Napoleon had sent with genocidal intent only very few made it back home. But while the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989 and quincentennial of the ""discovery"" of America in 1992 were lavishly celebrated with acts of State, monuments, conferences, and polemics, the Haitian Revolution's anniversary is bound to be passed over in silence in both the halls of power and metropolitan academies. Although few would doubt the profound effect the slave revolution had on the Western Hemisphere, there has until now been no extended study of it, and some describe Haiti as unrelated to any of the worlds' major civilizations. Modernity Disavowed tells a very different story: the Haitian Revolution is at the core of Western modernity in the Age of Revolution, and one of the reasons for subsequent denial or silencing is that Haiti forced the recognition of this fact on slaveholders and imperial powers. At a time when racial taxonomies were beginning to mutate into scientific racism and racist biology, the Haitian revolutionaries recognized the question of colour and race as a political one and placed claims of racial equality squarely on the agenda. Yet, as the cultural records of neighboring Cuba and the Dominican Republic show, the story of the Haitian Revolution has been framed in terms of barbarism unspeakable violence, outside civilization, outside politics, and beyond human language. From the time of the revolution onwards the story has been relegated to the margins of history; to rumors, oral histories confidential letters and secret trials. Focusing on Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti itself in the context of the African Diaspora, Modernity Disavowed argues that we cannot even begin to understand Creole cultures in the Americas unless we understand how they took shape around various forms of denial of the Haitian Revolution.

Bibliography

The historic Hope lands located on the Liguanea Plain in the southeastern parish of St Andrew, Jamaica, and once the site of one of the islands earliest sugar estates, has had a long history of human settlements dating back to approximately 600 CE, the era of the indigenous Tainos. It was not until 1655, however, with the English invasion and seizure of Jamaica from the Spanish, that the Hope landscape developed into a thriving rural agrarian settlement. Generous land grants were made to the invading officers and later to immigrants from Britain and North America and from other Caribbean islands. Major Richard Hope came in possession of over 2,600 acres in the Liguanea Plain. Major Hope, unlike many of his counterparts by the 1660s, managed to establish a small sugar plantation, which developed by the mid-1700s into one of the islands largest, most productive and technologically advanced slave sugar estates. In the 1770s the estate became the property of the Duke of Chandos and his family until 1848, when the estate was dismantled. Over 600 acres were sold to the Kingston and Liguanea Water Works Company and the remaining 1,700 acres were leased to the owner of the adjoining Papine and Mona estates. Poor accounting and border surveillance enabled several persons to possess the land, which was later sanctioned by the Limitations of Actions Law. With the governments acquisition of the entire property in 1909, the Hope estate underwent remarkable changes in the twentieth century. By 1960 the Hope landscape was radically transformed from a sugar estate worked by hundreds of enslaved black people to a premiere urban centre of commercial, residential and educational land use.

Description

06

Bibliography

This book chronicles the Tobago movement for autonomy from Trinidad from the time of the union of these two Caribbean islands from 1889 to 1980 when Tobago gained internal self-government. It argues that the problems Tobagonians complained about in the few years before internal self-government were longstanding and can be traced throughout the history of the union. The work puts the several calls for separation within the theoretical framework of identity. It posits that identity was the major buttress in the movement for autonomy. The manuscript's unique contribution is its ""integrationist-separatist continuum"" by which the author assesses the responses of British, colonial and local officials.The work adds to the historiography of the Caribbean and Trinidad and Tobago in particular, and is a useful case study of the issue of secession in the Caribbean. It serves as a comparison for the St Kitts - Nevis situation.The author uses primary sources from the Public Records Office and the Newspaper Library in London, the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, the Tobago Archives, the Registry Section of the Central Administrative Services, Tobago, the Heritage Library in Trinidad as well as oral history sources.