CFP: PAINTING THE CARIBBEAN, University of Essex, 6-7 May 2011

See below the announcement of a symposium which will take place next May. Offers of papers (title and short synopsis) should be sent to Peter Hulme [phulme@essex.ac.uk] by 15 January 2011. Please feel free to circulate the announcement.


PAINTING THE CARIBBEAN

A symposium at the University of Essex, 6-7 May 2011
Sponsored by American Tropics, UECLAA, and the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

For centuries the Caribbean has both attracted and produced artists who have represented the lineaments of its landscapes and cultures. Agostino Brunias, Paul Gauguin, Winslow Homer, Chris Ofili, and Peter Doig are among many who have visited and painted. Others born in the region, such as Camille Pissarro and Frank Bowling have remained haunted by their childhood memories. Yet others have returned again and again to paint the places and spaces of their islands: Isaac Belisario, Wifredo Lam, Michel-Jean Cazabon, Aubrey Williams, Gesner Armand, Pétion Savain, John Dunkley … And the tradition remains vibrant, as for example in the map-based works of Rafael Ferrer, José Bedia, and Ibrahim Miranda.

Derek Walcott, the St Lucian nobel laureate, has always been a keen painter of his island and an astute interpreter in his poetry of other painters. St Lucian painters such as Dunstan St Omer and Llewellyn Xavier are among the most distinguished in the region. So, in association with his time at Essex as Professor of Poetry, the AHRC-funded American Tropics project, along with the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art and the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, is organising a two-day symposium called Painting the Caribbean. In keeping with the place-based approach of the American Tropics project, this symposium will focus on how the places of the Caribbean have been represented—its landscapes, its cities, its light, its sea.

Featured speakers will include distinguished Caribbeanists and art historians Lisa Paravisini (Vassar) and Judith Bettelheim (SFSU).

Opening hours - Xmas period 20th Dec - 3rd Jan

Monday 20 December to Thursday 23 December: The Library will operate vacation hours


Monday 20/12/10 - Thursday 23/12/10: The Library will open at 9.00am and close at 6.00pm. Last entry into the Library will be at 5.45pm.


The Library will be closed over the Christmas holidays, from Friday 24 December to Monday 3 January, inclusive.



The Library will reopen at 9.00am on Tuesday 4th January 2011.

Archive of Rwandan genocide

Last week the Guardian reported on the Genocide Archive of Rwanda. The archive will be located atthe Kigali Genocide Memorial and has gathered 1,500 recordings and over 20,000 documents and photographs relating to the 1994 massacres. Material has come from a range of sources including Rwandan media outlets and museums, court reports, foreign institutions and from survivors.
A digital archive is being developed, initially to be made available onsite and then online. The project has been dweveloped by the Aegis Trust and the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide in Kigali, with assistance from the University of Tecas Libraries.

Fighting for Britain : African soldiers in the Second World War

Recently I attended a seminar hosted by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, where David Killingray discussed his recent book Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War.

David Killingray's book has been reviewed favourably and presents a history of African's at war and the African contribution to the war effort, between 1939 and 1947, looking at questions including recruitment, experiences of war, discipline and indiscipline, the retuirn home and demobilisation, and the social impact of service. The book is concerned with presenting 'history from below' and sources include oral evidence, written accounts, soliders letter, newlspapers and official sources.

I was pleased to note that one source used were letters included in the Commonwealth Studies Archives, including in the Michael Crowder papers (ICS123), and collated as part of Michael Crowder's research on the Bechuanaland Protectorate the Second World War, carried out as part of his study for the biography of Tshekedi Khama.