SEMINAR PROFILE

H22 -
Global Caribbean Fiction

The Caribbean is a place for tourists, a paradise; it is an area of contemporary poverty, a realm of natural disasters; it is the promise of sugared profit and the site of unspeakable taboo acts; it is Caliban�s fate. And perhaps it is none of these things. In this seminar, we shall focus on some of the current questions in Caribbean literature, paying attention to the genealogies of such concerns and debates. Our discussions will be guided by the two critically acclaimed novels by Caribbean authors, Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy and David Dabydeen's The Intended. In these novels, New York, London, Guyana, and Antigua jostle against each other, while ghosts of slavery and indentureship co-exist with ghosts of Conrad and Wordsworth. We shall discover how a complex and violent past gives birth to a quintessentially modern literary and cultural tradition whose influences are truly global.

Scholar:

Sharmila Sen

Location:

Harvard Hillel

Dates:

4/14/2011, 4/28/2011

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H22 -	Global Caribbean Fiction

	The Caribbean is a place for tourists, a paradise; it is an area of contemporary poverty, a realm of natural disasters; it is the promise of sugared profit and the site of unspeakable taboo acts; it is Caliban�s fate. And perhaps it is none of these things. In this seminar, we shall focus on some of the current questions in Caribbean literature, paying attention to the genealogies of such concerns and debates. Our discussions will be guided by the two critically acclaimed novels by Caribbean authors, Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy and David Dabydeen's The Intended. In these novels, New York, London, Guyana, and Antigua jostle against each other, while ghosts of slavery and indentureship co-exist with ghosts of Conrad and Wordsworth. We shall discover how a complex and violent past gives birth to a quintessentially modern literary and cultural tradition whose influences are truly global.

		Scholar:	Sharmila Sen
		Location:	Harvard Hillel
		Dates:	4/14/2011, 4/28/2011