Why Caribbean History Matters

AHA Session 217
Sunday, January 4, 2015: 2:30 PM-4:30 PM
Concourse C (New York Hilton, Concourse Level)
Chair:
Lillian Guerra, University of Florida
Panel:
Laurent M. Dubois, Duke University
Jesse E. Hoffnung-Garskof, University of Michigan
Melanie J. Newton, University of Toronto

Session Abstract

Caribbean history matters for the same reason everyone in the Caribbean “remembers” slavery: the legacies of slavery, imperialism, and historical responses to it are, in the Caribbean, immediately evident in all the “weightier” concepts we associate with modernity: notions of citizenship, individual freedom, collective liberation, and nation. Caribbean history is not merely about the “colonial origins of poverty”; it addresses the most fundamental questions of who we are, what we believe, and how we got that way.

See more of: AHA Sessions