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2025 -2026 AY Events

  • A group of people sits in a circle in a bright, book-lined meeting space during a discussion. Several participants are seated on wooden chairs while two people sit on a red couch in the foreground, with one person speaking and gesturing as others listen attentively. A small coffee table in the center holds fruit, snacks, drinks, and plates. Large windows provide natural light, and bookshelves and artwork decorate the room, creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere for conversation or a seminar.

  • 2025 - 2026 AY RAICCS EVENTS

     

    Undisciplined: Writing & Creating Otherwise

    Throughout the 2025-26 academic year, RAICCS co-sponsored the LCS signature speaker series led by Kaysha Corinealdi, entitled "Undisciplined: Writing & Creating Otherwise," which featured scholars who have utilized a wide array of topical, narrative, digital, and stylistic approaches in their works in ways that unsettle disciplinary boundaries and represent key transformations in the fields of Latinx & Caribbean Studies. Speakers included Nicole Ramsey and Melanie White, who co-created a visual cultures of Black Central America digital project; Devyn Spence Benson and Danielle Pilar Clealand, who have developed an oral history database of Black Cubans in Florida; Saudi Garcia, co-organizer of In Cultured Company, an organization dedicated to uniting Dominicans and Haitians for social justice and peace; Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, a literary scholar working on historical fiction around Afrodescendants in Costa Rica; Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez on Afro-Boricua archives, memory and history; and Javier Wallace, who discussed Basketball trafficking and its specific impact on Black Central American student athletes in the United States.  

     

    Contradictory Formations: Jamaica’s Contemporary Conjuncture  

    Our Fall semester was kicked off in collaboration with the Rutgers Geography Department in October 2025 exploring Jamaica’s current political state, which Jovan Scott Lewis (University of California Berkley), fruitfully described as a field of contradiction and tension. This tension, in which democracy, security, and the economy are being recomposed, Dr. Lewis argued, generates a critical vocabulary for apprehending contemporary Jamaican social life, unsettling the interpretive frames that have long governed Caribbean studies and development discourse.

     

    Theories and Methods Salon

    As winter set in, faculty and graduate students gathered at Nicole Burrowes’ home for our first Theories and Methods Salon, where we explored Caribbean decolonial ecologies, climate change, and catastrophe. Over lunch, we had a lively discussion of several works, including a pre-publication piece by Kevon Rhiney and Mimi Sheller; Alex Moulton’s (Hunter College, CUNY) “Beyond the Anthropocene Ark: Ecology of Climate Havens and Spaceships”; and the prologue to Malcom Ferdinand’s Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World.  

     

    The Trouble With/Of Sylvia Wynter's “Black Metamorphosis": A Symposium

    The new year was rung in with this historic event created in collaboration with the Rutgers English Department and current Cheryl Wall Postdoctoral Fellow in African American and African Diaspora Literature, Bryant Brown Jr. The event brought together the brilliant panelist Anothy Bogues, Bedour Alagraa, Felicia Bishop-Denaud, and Arlin Hill. This monumental discussion had viewers on Zoom and in-person at the edge of their seats as panelists discussed Sylvia Wynter's "Black Metamorphosis"--a massive, unpublished text from the 1970s that explores a range of methodological and critical perspectives in Caribbean studies, Black studies, and critical theory.  

     

    New Books in Caribbean Studies with Kaysha Corinealdi, Elena Lahr-Vivaz, and Imani Owens

    In February 2026, we continued our New Books in Caribbean Studies series, this time highlighting new books by three RAICCS Rutgers affiliates. Our speakers were Kaysha Corinealdi, Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century; Elena Lahr-Vivaz, Writing Islands: Space and Identity in the Transnational Cuban Archipelago; and Imani Owens on Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean.

     

    International Law and (In)Justice: Venezuela, Extrajudicial Force, and Caribbean Impacts

    In April 2026, RAICCS co-hosted this virtual panel organized by Sebastian León. With expertise from an interdisciplinary group of nationally and internationally prolific researchers, this event featured: Percy Hintzen, University of California – Berkeley; Melissa Ifill, University of Guyana; Timothy Gill, University of Tennessee; Rebecca Hanson, University of Florida; and Vierelina Fernández, Rutgers University, NB. The panel focused on contemporary crises in Venezuela within their broader historical and geopolitical contexts, connecting the U.S.-Venezuela case to broader tensions over governance, colonial legacies, and Caribbean racial politics. Co-sponsors included the Center for Latin American Studies, the Criminal Justice Program, the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies, and the Department of Sociology. A special thanks to the Office of the Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences for funding the event.

     

    New Books in Caribbean Studies with Ryan Jobson and Zophia Edwards

    In April 2026, Ryan Jobson (University of Chicago), author of The Petrostate Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty and Power in Trinidad and Tobago, and Zophia Edwards (John Hopkins University), author of Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago, who discussed their new books with commentary from two RAICCS graduate student affiliates, Ben Jacob and Ian Scott, and a lively audience Q&A session.  

     

    Jamaican Music in Motion

    The 2026 academic year closed out with this event featuring Jamaican writer and sociologist, Dr. Erna Brodber, and Jamaican Music Museum Director, Herbie Miller. Together, they explored the cultural and political contexts of Jamaican music across genres and the musical and cultural relationships between Jamaica and Louisiana/New Orleans. It was an honor to have these two Jamaican cultural luminaries in conversation, and the overwhelming zoom attendance spoke to that fact.

     Other articles in this newsletter:

    Farewell from the Current Director, Carter Mathes: https://criticalcaribbean.rutgers.edu/newsandevents/news/news-details/441-farewell-from-the-current-director-carter-mathes

    Updates from Our Affiliates: https://criticalcaribbean.rutgers.edu/newsandevents/news/news-details/443-updates-from-our-affiliates