CALL FOR PAPERS

Fifth International Conference of Caribbean Women’s Writing
Goldsmiths, University of London
Caribbean Studies Centre

27 â€" 28 April, 2007
THEME: Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery

The year, 2007, with its centennial focus on the abolition of the slave
trade and its impact on the Atlantic world including slave colonies of the
Caribbean is no better year in which to further the debate concerning
Caribbean women’s writing. Specifically, the conference theme seeks to
embed the central motif of burden of production/ reproduction which fell to
African-Caribbean women in the immediate aftermath of abolition and to
extend this to contemporary issues of writing and representation within the
region and the diaspora. Assuming Creole culture to be a significant part
of the legacy of Atlantic slavery, how might meanings of creolisation
inscribed within artefacts of the culture be fruitfully read? In engaging
with creolisation, is the breadth of responses limited in their
applicability to the region or is the dispora also to be considered
relative to issues of creolisation? How are power dynamics and resistance
implicated in cultural forms that have emerged and how has the
racialisation of Atlantic slavery impacted on these as well as on issues of
voice within the diaspora and the Caribbean region? We welcome exploration
of these and many more questions interrogating cultural responses to the
complex knowledge and experience of trans-Atlantic slavery.
        While the conference, ‘Writing, Diaspora and the Legacy of Slavery’ is
grounded in a concern with Caribbean Women’s Writing, papers that are
interdisciplinary and / or stretch the limits of this theme to include
other forms of cultural expression like music, film, visual arts and
digital technology are of particular interest.

Possible topics for consideration include:

• Caribbean Writing in Britain
• Women, Representation and Diaspora
• Creole languages, Creolisation, Diaspora and Region
• Theoretical Discourse and the Creole Cultural Artefact
• Slavery and the Gendered Body
• Absent Mothers / Absent Fathers
• ‘Creative friction’ and Conditions of Cultural Production
• Oral Word/ Written Word: / Visual Art/ Verbal Art
• ‘Relation’ and Women’s Writing

Proposal/ Submission Deadline: 5 February, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: 26 February, 2007

Abstracts
Submit an abstract of not more than 250 words and a brief biography with
the following details:
Name
Institutional affiliation (if applicable)
Postal address
Phone number
E-mail address
Title for the proposed presentation.

Please send abstracts to the Conference Committee <Caribbean_at_gold.ac.uk>,
or post to:
The Conference Organising Committee
Fifth International Conference on Caribbean Women’s Writing
Caribbean Studies Centre
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross
London, SE14 6NW
UK
http:// www. goldsmiths.ac.uk/caribbean

*******************

Dr Joan Anim-Addo
Senior Lecturer
Caribbean Studies Centre <http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/caribbean>
Black Body in Europe <http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/blackbodyineurope>
English & Comparative Literatures
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, SE14 6NW

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Received on Sun Jan 28 2007 - 15:01:34 EST