Society for Caribbean Studies

Postgraduate Conference 2021

CHAMBERS, NADINE
Abstract: In 1982, my mother embarked on a return to university to upgrade her Library
degree with knowledge of coding for library automation. 40 years later I found one of her
jump-drives containing a 20-year-old presentation jointly made with Claudette Faye Durrant
championing the library system as part of the growing computer infrastructure (ICT) at the
University of the West Indies (Mona). My paper upholds memory of librarian stewardship
and journalism in the Caribbean while using interviews with Mackie Burnette [Jamaica
Journal] and the insight of Patricia Alison Bishop (composer, writer, artist and
historian)[Gayelle]. My presentation will ask the SCS audience to consider the development
of steel pan technology as a Caribbean meter to weigh the cost and benefits of the
digitization drive that often comes from outside of Caribbean-lead initiatives and the
accompanying impact on different forms of Caribbean culture and history.
COMMISSIONG, NATASHA KOVEROLA
Abstract: The international development sector largely advertises that gender based
violence (GBV) is known as the most widespread form of violence in the Caribbean, yet
often ignores the impact that identity politics, specifically race, can have on women and girls
impacted by violence. This research explores the intersecting relationship between GBV and
the complex identities of black Caribbean (Trinidadian) women. This work is framed by
literature on reflexivity, violence and gender, critical race theory, identity studies, black
Caribbean feminism and cyberfeminist activism. At present, this work considers the voices
and demands of black Caribbean cyberfeminist activists on Twitter as they shape the online
geography of the Caribbean with regards to identity and GBV cases in their particular home
island countries. The digital discourse analysis of this content is put in conversation with the
reality of how the international development (GBV) sector understands identity and
violence as islands grapple with the continued advancement of GBV. Ultimately, this work
uncovers the violent realities of being a woman of African descent in the multi-cultural
geography of Trinidad and Tobago. Further, bringing to light the interplay between
‘blackness’, violence and Caribbean identities puts forth a critique of the international
development (gender) sector’s disregard for drivers of violence including contributing
intersectional factors (e.g. race).
Biography: Natasha Koverola Commissiong is a doctoral research student at the University
of Birmingham in the Human Geography department. Her work is focused on the
intersection of race, gender based violence and cyberfeminism in the Caribbean, specifically
Trinidad and Tobago. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Natasha completed an MSc. in
Anthropology and International Development from the London School of Economics and
Political Science and a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Southern California in
International Relations and American Studies and Ethnicity. She has worked in the
international development sector for various nonprofits as a senior fundraiser and for
programmes serving young women and girls in Africa and the Caribbean. Throughout her
education and career, identity politics and intersectionality has been at the centre of her
work.
EGAN, LIZ
Title: ‘Days of Terror’: Retellings of the Morant Bay Rebellion
Abstract: In 1919, Herbert G. de Lisser published his novel Revenge in Kingston, a fictional
retelling of Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion. The novel had been serialised earlier in the
decade as ‘Days of Terror: A Dramatic Novel’ in the Daily Gleaner newspaper, which de
Lisser edited. Both the published novel and newspaper serial centred the romantic
entanglements of white characters and the fictionalised daughter of Paul Bogle. Doing so,
de Lisser’s fictional reimagining of 1865 suggests how far the rebellion continued to offer an
important lens through which intersecting ideas about race, colour, class, and colonialism
could be articulated and refracted into the twentieth century. Through literature and
newspapers, this paper explores how the rebellion persisted as an important focal point in
later campaigns for political representation as well as touchstone through which codes of
race, colour, and class were conveyed in Jamaica. It forms part of my wider thesis that looks
to understand how creole whiteness was represented and performed between 1865 and
the labour unrest of the 1930s. Understanding whiteness, and with it “light-skin”, as a form
of social and cultural capital, this paper argues that later retellings of the Morant Bay
Rebellion demonstrate how articulations of race and colour changed and endured.
Examining this longer afterlife from the perspective of how it upheld and refashioned ideas
of creole whiteness, these retellings reveal ongoing anxieties as well as new tensions, both
within the island and in dialogue with Britain.
Biography: I am a second year PhD candidate at the University of Warwick, kindly supported
by Midlands4Cities doctoral training partnership, and supervised by Professor David
Lambert and Dr Sascha Auerbach. I was awarded a BA in History from the University of
Leeds and an MA in World History and Cultures from King’s College London, where my
dissertation focused on the Workman newspaper, a British Caribbean publication in 1920s
Panama. My PhD project is provisionally entitled ‘Constructing and Challenging Creole
Whiteness in Jamaica, 1865-1938’ and my wider research interests include race, gender,
print cultures and migration. I have recently co-organised a Warwick Humanities Research
Centre conference entitled ‘At Home in Empire: Colonial Experiences of Intimacy and
Mobility’.
FERNANDEZ JIMENEZ, MONICA
This presentation is an attempt to relocate the Jamaican-born writer and intellectual Claude
McKay as a Caribbean author within a hemispheric approach. I argue that McKay’s works,
which many times are seen as an exclusive product of the Harlem Renaissance, reflect a
response to what Aníbal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein have termed “Americanity”. I
locate his literature—as well as that of more contemporary authors such as Paule Marshall
or Junot Díaz—considering the influence of the United States on the Caribbean and vice
versa. With this, I attempt to identify characteristically Caribbean poetics which would defy
a long tradition of locating the authors in relation to their metropolis when, from very early
on, as Michelle Ann Stephen has noted, “American racial and national doctrine has shaped
the development of Caribbean identity” (255). Stephen’s study evidences that the
economic, historical and political connections between these two areas have been constant;
however, these have been dismissed in the analysis of transnational Caribbean-American
literature, which has been unified under categories devoted nationality or racial identity. I
finally contend that McKay is a foundational figure in order to understand the possibility of
an alternative genealogy of Caribbean literature based on regionalist aesthetics and pan-
American politics.
Biography: Mónica Fernández Jiménez is a junior researcher at the English Department in
Universidad de Valladolid. Before starting her PhD, she obtained her BA diploma in English
from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and later took a master’s degree in Literary
Studies at Leiden Universiteit in the Netherlands, where she graduated cum laude. In the
present she is the recipient of a grant from the Ministry of Universities in Spain for writing
her doctoral thesis. Under the supervision of Dr. Jesús Benito Sánchez, Mónica explores in
her thesis the possibilities of a hemispheric Caribbean-American aesthetic. As such, she has
published articles in national and international journals dealing with Caribbean and
Caribbean-American fiction and poetry such as Derek Walcott's Omeros or Junot Díaz's The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. As part of the English department in Valladolid she
teaches courses on American literature and history and British contemporary literature. As a
researcher she is part of two recognised research projects: one on American ethnic
literature and an ERASMUS+ project on Hospitality in European Film.
GORDON, OSKAR
Title: Class, community, and ethnography in the early poetry of Claude McKay (1889–1948)
Abstract: This paper examines the early dialect poetry of Jamaican poet Claude McKay,
particularly his 1912 collection Constab Ballads, considering how he constructs an
ethnographic voice in his depiction of Kingston through the lens of a constable in the
colonial service. McKay’s early verse employs a unique blend of patois and traditional
English verse forms in a mimicry of the bind in which the constable figure found himself,
between allegiance to the rigid forms of colonial and military hierarchy on the one hand,
and to working-class black Jamaicans on the other. I consider the poems in the context of
labour conditions in Jamaica in the period, anxieties about mass emigration to Central
America, and forms of xenophobia that were directed towards Middle Eastern immigrants
and ‘middleman’ professions. I argue that, in addition to his creative and playful handling of
form, McKay also looks to critique modes of ethnographic writing typical of Victorian
anthropology, while also anticipating developments in the field associated with
ethnographers such as Bronisław Malinowski.
Biography: I am a second year PhD candidate in English literature at Newcastle University.
My work examines the significance of ethnography in Irish modernism and the Harlem
Renaissance, and considers wider literary relationships across the Black (and green) Atlantic.
My research is funded by the AHRC’s Northern Bridge DTP, and I was previously a student at
UCL where my focus was on imperialism in the works of James Joyce.
JOSEPH, O'NEIL
Title: Roots of Sustenance and Survival: Women, Food and Sovereignty in Post-
Emancipation Tobago
Abstract: The central subject matter of this paper is women’s engagement with food
production and distribution in Tobago from 1838-1930. Scholars such as Woodville Marshall
argued that approximately one-third of the workforce in the windward islands, including
Tobago, left the estates by 1846, and that “women were probably the largest group” among
the “permanent defectors from estate labour.” Similarly, R.T. Smith suggested that freedom
in the British West Indies meant “the withdrawal of female labour from plantation work”. In
Tobago, while women agriculturalists fled the estates, they did not abandon working the
land. In fact, Tobago women were the backbone of the island’s agrarian economy during the
period 1838 to 1930.
In this paper I explore Tobago women’s prominent role as food producers and how food
became a tool of power and empowerment. Through food production and the sale of food
supplies, women in Tobago asserted control over resources, steered the economic
empowerment of their families, crafted identities as autonomous beings and created a
complex market culture in spaces where food was bought and sold. This paper, undergirded
by archival documents and oral testimonies, refines our understanding of labour force
organization, agricultural transformations after emancipation and women’s mobility in
Tobago, and by extension, the British Caribbean.
Biography: O’Neil Joseph is a PhD candidate in History at the University of the West Indies,
St. Augustine Campus. His thesis, Women on the Move in Post-Emancipation Tobago 1838-
1987, pioneers the detailed recording of the voices of women in Tobago and offers a gender
conscious history of the island. His research interests include Caribbean social history in
general and gender, culture and race relations in particular.
MOHAMMED, SHALIMA
Title: Exploitation: Re-imagining the migrant experience
Abstract: Problem Statement - There is an absence of specific information on who
perpetuates exploitation of migrants, and why.
(i) Objective: This investigation will fill that gap by focusing on Indo-Guyanese migrants to
Trinidad, with the objective of determining what factors predispose the exploiter to take
undue advantage of migrants. I argue that economic considerations are secondary to
psychological factors in exploitation behaviour.
(ii). Design & Methods: The academic literature was reviewed for historical antecedents of
exploitation of indentured immigrants on the plantations in British Guiana. Comparisons
were drawn between the experiences of the indentures and those of Indo-Guyanese
migrants employed as labourers in Trinidad between 1980 to 2018. To obtain personal
experiences, interviews were conducted with two (2) Indo-Guyanese migrants and two (2)
Indo-Trinidadians.
(iii). Results: Migrant workers were viewed as exploitable and were therefore, oppressed,
abused and demoralized by workplace authority figures, co-workers, state officials and
nationals. But they were also succoured, supported and befriended by different people of
the same categories who exploited them.
(iv). Conclusion: Factors which influence exploitation of migrants are the exploiter’s value
system, social position and economic power. The exploiter is a motivated tactician whose
goals, motives and needs take precedence over those of the migrant. This investigation has
serious implications for Guyana as a potential receiving country of returning and new
migrants in search of opportunities expected with the country’s anticipated economic
turnaround from the discovery of oil.
Biography: Shalima Mohammed is a business educator with experience in retail banking.
She has a strong preference for using one’s innate humour and spirituality to empower him
or her to develop leadership qualities and self-esteem. She holds a MSc. Degree in Business
Psychology (Franklin University, Ohio, USA); BSc. Degree in Psychology (Cum Laude
(COSTAATT, Trinidad & Tobago) and a Diploma in Business Management (San F’do Technical
Institute, now UTT, Trinidad & Tobago).
She is currently employed with the Ministry of Education in Trinidad. Her main research
interests are the application of emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and religious
teachings in the workplace, family and among minority groups
REDHEAD, HALEY
Title: Sexual Trauma and the Girl Child in Selected Novels by Gisèle Pineau and Jamaica
Kincaid
Abstract: This paper assesses childhood sexual trauma and its intersections with cultural
and transgenerational trauma in "L’Espérance Macadam" by Gisèle Pineau and
"Autobiography of My Mother" by Jamaica Kincaid. The Caribbean region upholds deeply
entrenched patriarchal values, and thus stays true to its legacy of the endemic devaluation,
abuse and violation of women and girls. Rape is instrumental in the oppression of women
and sexual violence is reinforced in the presence of racialised, gendered power relations.
Black Caribbean women writers such as Pineau and Kincaid have traditionally used literature
as a means of speaking out against this type of oppression and its resulting trauma. In the
selected novels, both Pineau and Kincaid write from the perspective of an Afro-Caribbean
girl who grows up in the postcolonial Caribbean, and who at some point is involved in sexual
acts with their father or father figure. In the context of postcolonial literary studies, rape
and sexual abuse are suggestive of the colonial project whereby the subaltern was brutally
exploited, oppressed, and subdued. This paper seeks to examine the literary
representations of childhood sexual trauma in the selected works and their relevance to the
cultural and transgenerational models of trauma.
Biography: Haley Redhead is a postgraduate student reading for a Master of Philosophy in
French Literature at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.
She adopts a comparative approach in her research which interrogates gender and race-
based childhood trauma in novels by Guadeloupean author, Gisèle Pineau, and Antiguan
writer, Jamaica Kincaid. Her research interests centre around postcolonial trauma theory,
childhood trauma and Caribbean feminism. She is currently working as an English teacher at
the University of Nantes, France while completing her thesis. She hopes to one day become
a literary translator.
TRACEY, CARL
Title: Christian Sound Systems in the UK: its origins, functions and theology
Abstract: The Christian sound system movement in Britain represents an exchange between
‘church hall’ and ‘dancehall’ which started in the late 1990s. This contentious engagement
between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ spaces is related to the wider discipline of theology and
popular culture. The aim of this study is to explore how Christians have engaged their faith
within black popular culture; focussing on sound systems. Current scholarship has analysed
sound systems in Britain through the lens of social theory, artistry and technology. This
essay investigates the history and function of the Christian sound system movement in
Britain through qualitative interviews with members of ‘Shekinah Sound Ministries’ and ‘His
Majesty’s Sound System’. The controversies involved in the Christianisation of the ‘dubplate’
is discussed as well as the criticisms directed at the movement for using reggae music as a
tool for evangelism in the early years. The data highlights the importance of the MC,
selector and engineer as the primary practitioners involved in ‘ministering the music’ to the
audience. The thesis positions the Christian sound system movement within the history of
black Christian music in Britain. Both traditions draw from an African Caribbean heritage
which then mixes in other contemporary styles to reflect a black British religious expression.
This thesis extends the discussion further by searching for theological themes behind the
Christian sound system performance which have been previously ignored in the literature.
This paper suggests that the Christian sound systems in Britain demonstrate an interfacing
of theology with Jamaican popular culture.
Biography: Carl Tracey is an independent researcher and practitioner specialising in gospel
music. He is a musician, radio presenter, audio documentary producer and DJ/selector of a
gospel sound system called ‘Radical Family’ based in the UK. He has completed a degree in
Commercial Music at the University of Westminster and a Masters by Research in Theology
and Religious Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University.
Research
• Masters Thesis (Canterbury Christ Church): Gospel Sound System thesis
• Book chapter: Tracey, C. (2020) ‘Sound Systems and the Christian Deviation’ in
Narratives from beyond the UK Reggae bass-line; The System is Sound