OUTLINE OF TOPICS AND READINGS: The Caribbean
last update: 24 Oct 05
go to list of assignments
--- Where the author or title is underlined, the piece is on the Internet: click on it.
--- Where the author is preceeded by a ¶ , the piece is accessible to you through Weldon's Scholar's Portal.
--- Where the reading is unmarked, it's in one of the books you bought.

Chronology of Caribbean Events   [4
Locations list for map quiz of 26 Sept
Some Caribbean map sources on the Web

12 Sept
Where's the Caribbean?
14,19 Sept
Video: Sugar Cane Alley

Nwankwo, Ifeoma C.K.
2002  "Caribbean Compositions: New Histories of Writing and Identity." Callaloo25#2: 990-98. [9
Aymer, Paula
2002  "Exposing Caribbean Tourism" (review of Kempadoo, Sun, Sex, and Gold). Small Axe #12: 209-11. [3
Goulbourne, H & J. Solomos
2004  "The Caribbean Diaspora: Some Introductory Remarks." Ethnic and Racial Studies 27#4: 533-43. [11
Read through these pieces: you don't have to worry about the details or the obscurities now. They're just meant to introduce you to a few themes in contemporary discourse about the Caribbean: to start your process of familiarization.

21 Sept
Hodge, Merle
1970 Crick Crack Monkey. [111
  This novel is a mine of social observation. Its largely "realist" form is characteristic of many West Indian novels (not all) & its observations of age, gender, race, class, etc. are acute. Enjoy & consider. The first major Anglophone post-independence novel by a woman.
26, 28 Sept
Map Quiz (Monday)

Gmelch, George & Sharon Gmelch
1997  "Introduction" and Chapter 1 in their: The Parish Behind God's Back.

Rex Nettleford on Africa in New World Identity   [1
Linebaugh & Rediker: Why Did Early Settlers Come to the Americas? [2
Mutabaruka
1992 "dis poem."  [2
  Mutabaruka is a Jamaican "dub poet" (like Toronto's Lillian Allen & others) whose poetry is meant to be read to music. He's recorded several CD's.
Aime Cesaire: Return to my Native Land.  (excerpt)   [2
Sidney Mintz on "The Forefathers of Crack"   [2
  The modern Caribbean was created & perpetuated to export, & continues to do so. But what has it exported? Earlier in his career, Mintz captured the peculiarity of New World plantation exports nicely with the phrase "proletarian hunger killers".

  Start reading:
Parry, J.H.; Sherlock, Philip; Maingot, Anthony    { = PSM }
1987  A Short History of the West Indies  (4th edn). Chapters 1-6.

3, 5 Oct
  Continue:
PSM,   Ch. 1-6
PSM,  Ch.  7-8

The Plantation System: Mintz, Curtin, & Watts.   [3
Kerr on traditional sugar planting   [2
Slavery: Remarks & Definitions   [6

10, 12, 17, 19 Oct
PSM, Ch. 9-13.
24 Oct
Yelvington, Kevin A.
2001  "The Anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean: Diasporic Dimensions." Annual Review of Anthropology 2001, #30: 227-260.
26 Oct
 
     Mid-Term Test
 
31 Oct, 2 Nov
Gmelch, George & Sharon Bohn Gmelch
1997  Chs. 3, 4, & 5 of their The Parish....  [83
7, 9, 14 Nov
Gmelch & Gmelch,  Chs. 6 to end (p. 206). [125
Family, Household and Gender: Some Quotes
16 Nov
Wilson on Reputation and Respectability
Besson, Jean
1993 "Reputation and Respectability Reconsidered: A New Perspective on Afro-Caribbean Peasant Women." From: Women and Change in the Caribbean: A Pan-Caribbean Perspective (Janet Momsen, ed.), 15-37.  [13
  Peter Wilson's analysis of Afro-Caribbean society in terms of gender and of "reputation" and "respectability" has two big problems: an inadequate analysis of power  & a thin & unconvincing assimilation of women to Eurocentric norms of respectibility. Besson uses her ethnography from Jamaica to show the centrality of women in Caribbean cultures of "reputation" & resistance.
21, 23 Nov
Abrahams, Roger
1981 "Symbolic Landscapes and Expressive Events." As reprinted in his: The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the emergence of Creole Culture, pp. 133-156.

The essays by Besson and Abrahams were handed out in class, but copies are also available in the Anthro. Dept. "Library" (a room across from the main Dept. office. You may borrow one, copy it, and return it. The "library" is open during regular office hours. Notice that these two essays are also the basis of your third discussion paper.