EVENT: Events to Commemorate the Centenary of Eric Williams’ Birth « Repeating Islands

Events to Commemorate

the Centenary of

Eric Williams’ Birth

Our thanks to Peter Jordens for preparing this reports on events organized to mark the forthcoming centenary of Eric Williams’s birth.

September 25, 2011 marks the centenary of the birth of Dr. Eric E. Williams (1911-1981), noted Caribbean statesman, visionary, historian, philosopher, intellectual, scholar and teacher, the first Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, also referred to as the Father of the Nation, and author of the seminal Capitalism & Slavery (1944) as well as several other classics such as The Negro in the Caribbean (1940), Massa Day Done (1961) and From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean (1970).

Here are a few of this year’s scholarly events of commemoration already held or soon to be held.

 

Already held

June 11, 2011. Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago.

25th Annual Eric Williams Memorial Lecture, “Eric Williams and the Challenge of Caribbean Leadership,” by Professor Colin A. Palmer. See newspaper article in Newsday (T&T), June 20, 2011, at http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,142541.html. The memorial lecture (pdf) can be downloaded at http://www.normangirvan.info/palmer-eric-williams-memorial. Prof. Palmer (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York) is author of the biography Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean (2008).

 

Upcoming

September 24-25, 2011. Oxford, England, UK.

International Conference: “New Perspectives on the Life and Work of Eric Williams”

Organized by St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University (USA), and the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine (T&T)

Website http://www.mainlib.uwi.tt/divisions/wi/collsp/ericwilliams/ericwilliams.htm

Contact farrellewmc@gmail.com or ewmc@ewmc-tt.org

Note: St. Catherine’s, Oxford, is Dr. Wiliams’ alma mater (History, 1938).

Conference presenters include: Selwyn R. Cudjoe, William A. Darity, Ronald Findlay, Knick Harley, Joseph Inikori, Franklin W. Knight, Lydia Lindsey, Rafael Marques, Nathan Nunn, Colin Palmer, Arnold Rampersad, Selwyn Ryan, David Beck Ryden, Brinsley Samaroo, and Dale Tomich.

 

September 27, 2011. London, England, UK

Symposium: “Independence and After: Dr. Eric Williams and the Making of Trinidad & Tobago”

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Americas of the University of London (UK) and the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum at the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine (T&T)

Website http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/eventdetails.html?id=9421

Contact olga.jimenez@sas.ac.uk or Kate.Quinn@sas.ac.uk

Presenters include: Matthew Bishop, Colin Clarke, Humberto Garcia Muniz, Jacqueline Nunes, Colin Palmer, Raoul Pantin, Selwyn Ryan, Brinsley Samaroo, Raffique Shah, Paul Sutton, and Teruyuki Tsuji.

 

October 12-14, 2011. La Habana, Cuba

Memorial Conference on Eric Williams’ Centennial

Casa de Altos Estudios Don Fernando Ortiz, Faculty of Philosophy and History, Univ. of Havana

Contact Eduardo Torres Cuevas at tcuevas@ffh.uh.cu or Graciela Chailloux Laffita at gchailloux@cubarte.cult.cu

For more information online