Convenors: Ingrid Kummels, Stefan Rinke, Claudia Rauhut, Birte Timm

Deadline Call for Papers February 10, 2012

Please send proposals (300 words, in English) and other inquiries to Claudia Rauhut (rauhut@zedat.fu-berlin.de) and Birte Timm (Birte.Timm@fu-berlin.de).

Keynote speakers: J. Lorand Matory (Duke University) and Matthew J. Smith (University of the West Indies, Mona).

The Institute for Latin American Studies of the Free University of Berlin is pleased to invite proposals for presentation at this interdisciplinary conference. The primary goal is to assess current trends and encourage new approaches in the research on the Caribbean from anthropology, history, sociology, political science, literature and other disciplines. The conference intends to provide a platform for exchanges between junior and senior scholars who work on the Greater Caribbean, understood as a region whose diaspora dimensions extend beyond the Caribbean islands and adjacent continental coasts.

As a highly globalized region which is tremendously shaped by multiple paths of migration since European colonization in the 15th century and the transatlantic slave trade, the Caribbean is often described as a paradigm or master symbol of “modernity” and globalization. A myriad of different cultures, languages, religions, ideas and practices have not only influenced and formed the Caribbean, but the respective Caribbean dynamics, in return, have profoundly reshaped other parts of the world. However, not all of the multiple interrelations between the Caribbean, North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia have received equal attention or have been viewed from a historical perspective.

The transatlantic networks of a range of actors such as religious mediators, labor migrants, traveling entertainers and other specialized professionals as well as political ideologues such as transnationally active radical nationalists still remain to be explored. Their “Live Dialogue” (J. Lorand Matory) – their long-term weaving of connections through travel back and forth over the Atlantic – may have contributed in specific ways to shape daily culture and religious practices, social movements as well as national and transnational political images that refer to blackness, indigenousness or Creole identities. The multiple interrelations between the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia are therefore not just viewed as legacies of the past, but as actively and continuously renewed practices in colonial and post-colonial contexts.

Contributions are especially welcome but not restricted to the following panels:

- Historical Formation of “the Caribbean”
- Weaving Identities and Belongings
- Migration, Diaspora and Cultural Transfers
- Religion and Transatlantic Linkages