The 31st Annual Meeting of the
West Indian Literature Conference
The 31st Annual Meeting of the West Indian Literature Conference, hosted by the Caribbean Literary Studies Program of the University of Miami at Coral Gables will be held on October 11-13, 2012. The main theme is “Imagined Nations, 50 Years Later: Reflections on Independence and Federation in the Caribbean.” The organizers have extended the deadline for submissions to April 15, 2012.
Description: In 2012 Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of their independence from Britain. However, while 2012 marks these very auspicious occasions, it is also the 50th anniversary of the collapse of the West Indies Federation. Anniversaries encourage and even demand reflection and re-visitations of the expectations, opportunities lost, and those well used, the failures and achievements as well as the considerations that attended these occasions. For more than fifty years, novelists, poets, visual artists and other cultural workers have been actively involved in imagining, revising and challenging the project of independence and the future it promised for so many. The 50th Anniversary is an excellent opportunity to revisit the movement towards and attainment of independence; the arts movements that emerged out of these nationalist projects; the cultural institutions that gave expression to the changes taking place; the rise and collapse of the West Indian Federation and the implications of all of these developments for the Caribbean region in the new era of globalization. Moreover, this occasion provides an important critical crossroad for us to consider the extent to which dialogues about independence and Federation have preoccupied not only writers, but also artists working in a number of different mediums in the Caribbean region. To this end, the University of Miami has proposed that the 31st West Indian Literature Conference invites writers, cultural practitioners and scholars to submit papers that engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the various representations of both independence and the rise and fall of the West Indian Federation.
The organizers welcome abstracts of 250-500 words in length. Abstracts should include name, academic affiliation and contact information, and should be sent to westindianlitconf2012@gmail.com
For more information, see http://www.as.miami.edu/cls/conferences.html and previous post Call for Papers: The 31st West Indian Literature Conference
Illustration from http://www.ulib.niu.edu/rarebooks/westindiesmaps.cfm