Travelling Librarian: Schomburg Centre for Black Cultural Studies

The final stop on my visit was to the Schomburg Centre for Black Cultural Studies, a New York Public Library Research Library, which collects, preserves and makes available material on peoples of African descent. For over 80 years the Center has been an important focus for collecting within the United States, and its collections include materials from Africa and the Caribbean.

Some particular archive collections of interest include collections relating to US organisations opposing the South African apartheid system, and archives of the American West Indian Ladies Aid Society, the Bermuda Benevolent Association, the British Virgin Islands Benevolent Association, George Padmore letters, Claude McKay letters and manuscripts, and a collection of letters written by C.L.R. James to his former wife and political associate, Constance Webb.

CFP: 35th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies

35th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies


International Slavery Museum
Albert Dock
Liverpool

Wednesday 29th June - Friday 1st July 2011

The Society for Caribbean Studies invites submissions of short abstracts of 250 to 400 words for research papers on the Hispanic, Francophone, Dutch and Anglophone Caribbean, and on Caribbean diasporas for this annual international conference. Papers are welcomed from all disciplines and can address the themes outlined below. We also welcome abstracts for papers that fall outside this list of topics, and we particularly welcome proposals for complete panels, which should consist of three papers.

Those selected for the conference will be invited to give a 20-minute presentation and will be offered the opportunity to publish their work as part of the Society's online series of papers.

Abstracts should be submitted along with a short CV by 7th January, 2011. Proposals received after the deadline may not be considered.

PROVISIONAL PANELS

• Liverpool and the Caribbean
• The Fall of the Plantation Complex
• Museums and Caribbean Histories
• Slavery, Commemoration, and Representation
• Ports and Cities
• Health, Social Policy, and Disability
• Environment and Natural Disasters
• The Challenges of Democracy
• Childhood and Education
• Theatre, Dance, and Performance
• Food and Material Culture
• Colonial Governance and Decolonisation

To submit an abstract online, please visit our website: http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/

The Society will provide a limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries for presenters to assist with registration and accommodation costs. Postgraduate researchers should indicate that they are seeking a bursary when submitting their abstract, but please note that travel costs cannot be funded.

Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Award, the deadline for which is also 7th January, 2011. For more information on the Bridget Jones Award, contact Kate Quinn at kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk, or visit our website: http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/

For further queries, or alternative methods of abstract submission, contact Lorna Burns at societyforcaribbeanstudies@gmail.com, or by mail at The Department of English Literature, 5 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ.

CFP: Extended deadline - Peace and (In)security: Canada's Promise, Canada's Problem - British Association for Canadian Studies

PEACE AND (IN)SECURITY: CANADA'S PROMISE, CANADA'S PROBLEM?
BACS 36th Annual Conference
The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
4–6 April 2011

 

CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENDED DEADLINE!

The British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS) is pleased to announce that their 36th annual conference will take place on 4–6 April 2011 at the University of Birmingham. Founded in 1900, the ‘Redbrick’ university is located within the United Kingdom’s second largest and most diverse city.

 

Reflecting one of the explicit priorities of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (Government of Canada), the conference aims to interrogate the historical legacies, contemporary realities and cultural myths of the ‘peaceable kingdom'. What constitutes peace in the context of economic instability and political insecurity? Which discourses, images and texts circulate in a time of environmental crisis and social anxiety? How do the actions, events and conflicts of the Canadian past inflect the policies, politics and imaginings of future security?

 

The British Association for Canadian Studies invites paper proposals related to notions of peace and (in)security pertaining across, within and beyond the field of Canadian Studies. Proposals for 20-minute papers, to be presented in either English or French, are invited from any single disciplinary or multidisciplinary perspective. Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and comparative panel proposals, including those from postgraduate students, are welcome.

 

Paper proposals will be especially appreciated in the following areas:

• identities and insecurities
• surveillance and security: histories, institutions, discourses, practices
• cultures of dissent: texts, policies, movements, communities
• internal or external threats, conflicts, and instabilities
• histories, visions and narratives of peace
• geographies, representations and economies of (in)security

Enquiries and proposals to:

Jodie Robson, BACS Administrator

Email: canstuds@gmail.com

Website: http://sites.google.com/site/bacsconference2011/

 

Proposals (panel and individual) and deadline:

Email abstract(s) of 200–300 words and brief CV (please do not exceed one side of A4) which must include your title, institutional affiliation, email and mailing address by 10 December 2010. Submissions will be acknowledged by email. Postgraduate students are especially welcome to submit a proposal and there will be a concessionary conference fee for students. BACS regrets that it is unable to assist participants with travel and accommodation costs

Important Notice: The libraries in Senate House will be closed Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th November

Due to operational difficulties beyond our control the libraries in Senate House including the Commonwealth Studies Library will be closed Wednesday 24th and Thursday 25th November.


Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Fines accrued on 24th and 25th will be waived.

Travelling Librarian: New York University

New York was the final destination on my tour and I started with a visit to New York University. The Bobst Library is NYU's main library and was built in 1972 to a design by architects Philip Johnson and Richard Foster. A noticeable feature is the large internal atrium.

NYU's Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies began in the 1960’s but in depth collecting in the Caribbean region started later in the mid 1980s. Despite this more recent interest NYU houses a strong collection of material, aided in part by the donation of the Research Institute for the Study of Man. Library, archive and vertical file material up to 1985 was donated to the NYU Library to improve access and help preserve this material. All the library material has been added to the NYU catalogue and other collections listed. Details about the RISM collections are available in a guide to the collections.

It was interesting to spend a little time with the collections - noting that some of the RISM volumes had originally been sent from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, as duplicates from the West India Committee Library collections. In my conversations with Angela Carreno, the subject specialist, we dicussed collaboration between New York libraries, sources for Caribbean materials, and the NYU ongoing renovation programme.

CFP: New Zealand History, O.E.

Call for papers

New Zealand History, O.E.

 

History about 'home' from historians 'away'

Proposals are sought for a seminar exploring aspects of Aotearoa/New Zealand history to be held in London on Saturday 11 June 2011 at Richmond, the American International University, Kensington, London.

Aotearoa/New Zealand's changing relationships with the wider world along with the now established nationalist and rising post-national and post-colonial theories and epistemologies have also meant that historians working on topics relevant to Aotearoa/New Zealand's histories have had to grapple with new ways of thinking about old topics as well as the emergence of new topics and approaches. For European (including the UK) based researchers there are additional challenges caused by, in many cases, being the only Aotearoa/New Zealand focussed local researcher, often in any discipline area.

We are interested in proposals from any branch of history where researchers might want to explore aspects of their work with others whose research is either Aotearoa/New Zealand focussed or who discuss aspects of Aotearoa/New Zealand in their teaching and research. We would also welcome more methodological and reflexive papers that explore, but are not limited to,

• The expatriate historian
• Viewing the 'periphery' from the 'centre'
• New questions about old relationships
• Creative methodologies away from main/major sources

We are interested too in exploring the possibilities for a network of European-based historians whose work focuses or examines Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Please send proposals jointly to both:

Prof. Dominic Alessio, Richmond, the American International University at mailto:ALESSID@Richmond.ac.uk

AND

Dr Malcolm MacLean, The University of Gloucestershire at mmaclean@glos.ac.uk

Closing date: 21 March 2011

Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the United States (FBIS)

Highlighting a recent e-resource of use to readers interested in the Commonwealth and beyond.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the United States (FBIS) has gathered and translated information from worldwide sources. The original mission of FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe and trans-late intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broad-casts from occupied territories. These translations, or transcriptions in the case of English language mate-rials, make up the Daily Reports


Translated into English from more than 50 languages - from Amharic to Urdu - these comprehensive media reports from around the globe include news, interviews, speeches, editorial commentary and other ma-terials. FBIS provides verbatim translations, abstracts or summaries of original broadcasts or written texts.
 
The FBIS database has been created from fiche using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to digitize the content. Each page is produced in a manner that provides the highest quality possible image from the fiche. This includes deskewing and cropping every page image. When the computer cannot recognize or misinterprets some of the letter shapes on the page this can result in searches providing false reports.


FBIS Daily Reports, 1974-1996 is comprised of EIGHT separate regional Daily Reports whose mnemonic abbreviations and coverage include the Middle East and [North] Africa (MEA), 1974-1987; Near East and South Asia (NES), 1987-1996; South Asia (SAS), 1980-1987; Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 1974-1980 and (AFR), 1987-1996; China (CHI), 1974-1996; Asia and the Pacific (APA), 1974-1987; East Asia (EAS), 1987-1996; Latin America (LAT and LAM), 1974-1996; Eastern Europe (EEU), 1974-1996; Soviet Union/Central Eurasia (SOV), 1974-1996; Western Europe (WEU), 1974-1996. The FBIS Daily Reports included in this collection were published from April 1974 through September 1996.

Foundation Day Thursday 25th November 2010 - partial closure

Foundation Day 25/11/10: Senate House Library South Block closing at 3.00pm


To accommodate University of London's Foundation Day the South Block of Senate House Library will close at 3.00pm. Close down procedure to clear the Library will begin earlier. The North Block (including ground Floor Library) of Senate House Library will remain open as usual (until 9.00pm, last entry 8.45pm).
 
The open access Commonwealth Studies collection will be available - but do note that items held in Stack and Archives and Special Collections will not be available during this closed period.

Travelling Librarian: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana (total population 180,000) in east-central Illinois. It is situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, 125 miles west of Indianapolis, and 180 miles northeast of St. Louis, and I travelled to and from the university by train, on an Amtrak service.

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at UIUC is a Title VI National Resource Center in consortium with the University of Chicago Center for Latin American Studies, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. (Most of the libraries visited were linked to centres included in this funding scheme, either individually or in consortia.)


The University Library is one of the largest public university libraries in the United States, with more than 24 million items in the main library and over 35 departmental libraries and divisions. The Latin American and Caribbean Library is one of those libraries - but is soon to merge with other area studies collections. UIUC Libraries hold one of the largest collections of Latin American and Caribbean materials in the United States. Materials are located in the Main Stacks and in the various UIUC departmental libraries, including the Music and other libraries.

During my visit we spoke about collections and services generally. One interesting and useful resource I discussed with the current interim Librarian for the LAC collection was the Bibliographic Guide to Black Caribbean Literature - compiled by Thomas Weissinger and Nelly Sfeir v. de González.  

Travelling Librarian: University of Illinois Chicago

My person in visiting the Library at the University of Illinois Chicago was to spend time with staff from Special Collections and Digital Projects with whom I'd been working with 18 months ago on a joint digitisation bid, and to look at some of the collections we'd been talking about.

The University of Illinois Chicago holds three collections that were of interest: one collection of archives and two book collections.

•The Sierra Leone manuscripts collection consists of items related to the British administration of Sierra Leone, including public and private papers of British officials in the colony of Sierra Leone, 1792-1825. The collections includes reports and hand-drawn plans of the settlement and diaries and correspondence from Lt. John Clarkson (1973-1828) - Governor of Sierra Leone, 1792-1793; and from Captain Edward H. Columbine (d. 1811) - Governor of Sierra Leone, 1809-1811; an early collation of laws of Sierra Leone; Journals of various West African voyages  ( Lt. George Mitchener, Commander of the Brig, "Protector" - Reports of a cruise to Whydah and Benin, 1811; Lt. George W. Courtenay, Commander of H.M.S. "Bann." describing his experiences as a member of the anti-slavery patrol on the West African Coast, including visits to Sierra Leone and Liberia, 1823-1825; Richard M. Jackson, "Journal of a Voyage to Bonny River on the West Coast of Africa in the Ship Kingston from Liverpool" discussing a trading voyage, a trip to the Cameroons and the West African slave trade, 1825-1826; and John and Richard Lander, correspondence from their expedition in West Africa which led to the discovery of the mouth of the Niger River, 1830-1834

•The Atlantic Slave Trade Collection consists of over 200 years of legal, religious and secular publications documenting the Atlantic slave trade, including works issuing from Spain, France, Portugal, England, Africa and the Americas.



•The H.D. Carberry Collection of Caribbean Studies contains almost 1,000 volumes of English language literature and non-fiction by Caribbean authors. The works in this collection are generally first editions, published in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century. Note also: Images of the Caribbean Diaspora: Book Jacket Art from the H.D. Carberry Collection of Caribbean Studies.

Trove Australia

Trove: Australia


The National Library of Australia's Trove search service is a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. Material covered includes include digitised materials from Australian archives, academic institutions and museums as well as resources about Australia produced by overseas institutions.
Material indexed includes multimedia, images, photographs, maps, music and sound, diaries. letters and archives, newspapers, books, journal articles, theses and archived websites.

All subject areas of the sciences, social sciences and humanities are covered; with a particular emphasis upon Australian political, social and economic history; Australian political parties and politics; and the economy and culture of Australia.

Many items can be accessed in full online. Bibliographic information is offered for other items.

Free access to archives

We're pleased to announce that ALL users will now have free access to archive collections held in Senate House Library, including Commonwealth Studies collections.

Archives users and reminded that archives and manuscripts are available for consultation by appointment only, and at one full working day's notice. Advance notice is needed to ensure material can be made available for your visit. Do check the archives catalogue.


The cut-off point for making appointments is 4pm. Any messages after this time will be dealt with the following working day (and archives therefore produced for the day after that).

Material may be ordered in advance by email shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk, telephone: 020 7862 8470, letter or in person.

Travelling Librarian - University of North Carolina and Duke University

The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and Duke University in Durham are separated by a short bus journey. Although one is a state funded and one a private university the two institutions have for many years co-operated in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, both in terms of academic departments and between libraries. Both libraries have strong collections developed over many years and under their co-operation agreement Duke has a responsibility for research level material covering the English-speaking Caribbean.

One of my reasons for visiting these two libraries was to explore how co-operation in collection worked in practice. I was also interested in seeing digitisation initiatives at UNC and the Haiti Lab at Duke, a multidisciplinary humanities research laboratory bringing together resources, faculty, graduates and undergraduates in one space to develop collaboration and the exchange of ideas, as well as working on projects such as women's rights in Haiti, post traumatic stress, translating and transcribing historic documents, alongside a visiting artist and a project looking at mapping conspiracies and resistance across the Atlantic world.

Call for Papers - Development and Empire, 1929-1962

Call for Papers

Development and Empire, 1929-1962

University of York (UK)

Saturday, 2 July 2011

The global foreign aid budget, which has risen significantly in the first decade of the twenty-first century, is controversial. Although aid has the potential to facilitate capital formation and knowledge transfer, the development economics literature divides into optimists and pessimists, who argue that aid is allocated ineffectively with pernicious effects on long term growth. Despite a voluminous literature on aid, dating back over half a century, historians have only made fleeting contributions to these debates. Historians of the British Empire, however, have access to excellent data that can provide useful insights.

British aid policy dates back to the 1929 Colonial Development Act (CDA), which set up a Colonial Development Fund (CDF) for development projects. Before then, infrastructure projects were financed using international loan finance supplemented by colonial public expenditure. In 1940, the CDA was succeeded by the Colonial Development and Welfare Act (CDWA), which included the development of social services and increased the sum in the CDF from £1 million to £5 million. Official accounts and specialists academic studies have confirmed that British policy was affected by geo-strategic and domestic macro-economic concerns and that its implementation was constrained by the contingencies imposed by post-war austerity. With some notable exceptions there have been far fewer studies of how aid was actually used within colonies.

This one-day conference will extend the literatures on colonialism and development by: tracing the origins of British aid policy; exploring metropolitan and colonial political economies of aid policy during the epoch of decolonisation; considering the impact of aid in British dependent territories; and evaluating how aid policy affected the meanings given to ‘development’.

We are seeking proposals for a 20-minute paper on British colonies in South East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean that will consider one or more of the following questions:

• How did local bureaucrats, business and other social elites respond to the opportunities provided by an augmented aid budget?

• Did colonial elites collaborate or compete? How were colonial agendas set?

• How did financial-cum-institutional constraints as administrated by the British Treasury affect public capital formation in London and overseas?

• How did scarcities affecting international, British and colonial product markets, and discriminatory imperial commercial policies, affect the allocation and expenditure of aid?

• How was aid administered on the ground: by whom; for whom; and with what effects?

We may offer a limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries to assist postgraduate presenters with registration and travel costs. Those seeking a bursary should state so on their submission.

Submission:

Proposals must include the following:

- Title

- Summary of proposal of maximum 250 words

- 1 page c.v. including author’s name, address, email , institutional affiliation

All proposals must be sent to Dr. Henrice Altink (ha501@york.ac.uk) or Dr. David Clayton (dwc1@york.ac.uk) no later than 17 December 2010. Notifications will be sent by 14 January 2011.

Travelling Librarian - University of Florida: Gainesville, North Florida

Despite intentions to update this blog while travelling, the intensity of meetings, travelling, note taking and preparation for each day prevented these best laid plans. Over the next few days I hope to make up for this by short descriptions of each stop.

The University of Florida, based in Gainesville, north Florida is a land-grant state university, set in a landscape of largely oak trees and spanish moss, as well as a few palm trees. The library is the strongest for Caribbean material in the state, and collects across the English speaking, Spanish speaking and French speaking Caribbean.  Due to the university's land grant status the library has a particular interest in areas such as tropical agriculture, sugar, citrus fruit, rural anthropology and sociology, and environmental issues. material from the Caribbean is bought for both the Latin American and Caribbean collection and other parts of the library system.

The collection is notable for its collections of newspapers (on microfilm and increasingly in digitised format). As well as newspapers the library also holds material such as the Bahamas Government records on microfilm and the Leeward Islands Gazette - now digitised. 

The University of Florida hosts the technology and equipment for the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Call for Papers: 35th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies

35th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies

International Slavery Museum, Albert Dock, Liverpool

Wednesday 29th June - Friday 1st July 2011

 The Society for Caribbean Studies invites submissions of short abstracts of 250 to 400 words for research papers on the Hispanic, Francophone, Dutch and Anglophone Caribbean and their diasporas for this annual international conference. Papers are welcomed from all disciplines and can address the themes outlined below. We also welcome abstracts for papers that fall outside this list of topics, and we particularly welcome proposals for complete panels, which should consist of three papers.

Those selected for the conference will be invited to give a 20-minute presentation and will be offered the opportunity to publish their work as part of the Society's online series of papers.

Abstracts should be submitted along with a short CV by 7th January, 2011.

Proposals received after the deadline may not be considered.

PROVISIONAL PANELS

• Liverpool and the Caribbean
• The Fall of the Plantation Complex
• Museums and Caribbean Histories
• Slavery, Commemoration, and Representation
• Ports and Cities
• Health, Social Policy, and Disability
• Environment and Natural Disasters
• The Challenges of Democracy
• Childhood and Education
• Theatre, Dance, and Performance
• Food and Material Culture
• Colonial Governance and Decolonisation

To submit an abstract online, please visit our website: http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/

The Society will provide a limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries for presenters to assist with registration and accommodation costs.

Postgraduate researchers should indicate that they are seeking a bursary when submitting their abstract, but please note that travel costs cannot be funded.

Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Award, the deadline for which is also 7th January, 2011. For more information on the Bridget Jones Award, contact Kate Quinn at kate.quinn@sas.ac.uk, or visit our website: http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk/

For further queries, or alternative methods of abstract submission, contact Lorna Burns at societyforcaribbeanstudies@gmail.com, or by mail at The Department of English Literature, 5 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ.

Institute of Commonwealth Studies Human Rights Seminar Series 2010-11

Human Rights Seminar Series 2010-11


Unless otherwise indicated seminars will take place at 5.30pm in Room G32, Senate House,School of Advanced Study, University of London

For maps and directions: http://www.sas.ac.uk/maps.html

For further information, please contact Par Engstrom (par.engstrom@sas.ac.uk)


Wednesday, 17 November
The Judicial Protection of Social Rights: An Incrementalist Approach
Dr Jeff King, Fellow and Tutor in law, Balliol College, and Research Fellow, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford


Wednesday, 24 November
Public Security or Social Defence? Explaining Change and Continuity in Brazil's Public Security Policies
Prof Anthony W. Pereira, Director Brazil Institute, King's College London
Note change of venue: Stewart House, Seminar Room 274/5


Wednesday, 1 December
Civilian Social Networks and the Social Construction of Genocide Victims: A Topology of the Unión Patriótica (Colombia)
Andrei Gomez-Suarez, Lecturer in International Security, University of Sussex


Wednesday, 26 January
Lawfare and Palestine
Dr Michael Kearney, Fellow in Law, LSE


Wednesday, 9 February
Including ‘Caste’ in the UK Equality Act (2010)
Meena Varma, Executive Director of Dalit Solidarity Network UK


Wednesday, 2 March
Title tbc
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Co-director, Centre for the International Politics of Conflict, Rights and Justice, SOAS, and Co-chair, London Transitional Justice Network (LTJN)


Wednesday, 30 March
Legitimacy and Supranational Human Rights Courts
Dr Başak Çali, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights and Principal Investigator European Court of Human Rights Project, UCL