The Caribbean Sea as “Estuary of the Americas”

Drawing on Edouard Glissant's idea that the Caribbean Sea is the estuary of the Americas, I see and teach Caribbean history as hemispheric. The Greater Caribbean includes the the greater and lesser Antilles as well as the circum-Caribbean/Gulf coastlines of North America, Central America and South America. As Associate Director of a Master's Program in Caribbean Studies that sends students to study in Mexico, Spain and Cuba and considers all three part of the Caribbean, I have invested much time in developing syllabi and program related educational activities that think about the Caribbean in ever more expansive ways that draw in the coastal areas of South, Central and North Americas, crossing national and imperial lines.  This presentation makes a case for locating a broad "Circum-Caribbean" that includes Latin America and the US South, and proposes that this framework has the potential for redefining how scholars can teach "the Americas" in ways that challenge accepted divisions between U.S., Caribbean and Latin American and Latino/a fields.