Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies
This conversation between the Jamaican writer and sociologist, Dr. Erna Brodber, and Jamaica Music Museum Director, Herbie Miller, will explore the cultural and political contexts of Jamaican music across genres, and will also touch upon the musical and cultural relationships between Jamaica and Louisiana/New Orleans.
Zoom registration link: https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/woLAxt-TRVWaa54cStVfPQ
Join us on April 30th (Zoom) at 7:30 PM for another amazing talking in our New Books in Caribbean Studies series!
We will be joined by Ryan Cecil Jobson and Zophia Edwards who will be in conversation about their new books, The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty and Power in Trinidad and Tobago(University of Chicago Press, 2024) and Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago (Duke University Press, 2025), respectively.
The event will also feature commentary from two of RAICCS' graduate student affiliates, Ben Jacobs and Ian Scott.
Zoom registration link: https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/7nbGeuLfQpemG2ywlLAYdg
Basketball, Empire, and the Price of the Dream
In this talk, Javier Wallace, author of Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams, uses basketball to examine race, empire, and migration in the Americas. Focusing on Panama, he shows how the sport took root in Black communities shaped by U.S. imperial presence in the United States Panama Canal Zone. In the Canal Zone, sport became both a site of connection and one of the few avenues for national representation. As basketball has globalized, these racial dynamics have not disappeared. They have evolved.
Today, young Black athletes from Panama and the Global South are pushed to migrate to the United States, often entering poorly regulated systems that expose them to legal uncertainty, discrimination, and exploitation. Drawing from real stories, Wallace reframes basketball as more than a game. He will share how basketball can be a lens into how power, race, and immigration shape whose dreams are supported and whose are put at risk.
Monday, April 13, 20263:50 PM to 5:10 PM
Seminar Room 6051, Academic Building West(15 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, NJ)
THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROGRAM PRESENTS
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND (IN)JUSTICE:VENEZUELA, EXTRAJUDICIAL FORCE, AND CARIBBEAN IMPACTS
Panel
Percy C. HintzenProfessor EmeritusUniversity of California, Berkeley
Mellissa IfillSenior LecturerUniversity of Guyana
Timothy GillAssociate ProfessorUniversity of Tennessee
Rebecca HansonAssociate ProfessorUniversity of Florida
This panel will be a conversation that situates the contemporary crises in Venezuela within their deeper historical and geopolitical contexts, offering insights that go beyond standard media narratives. Our speakers will connect the U.S.-Venezuela case to broader tensions concerning governance, colonial inheritances, and Caribbean racial politics. They will also reflect on how to negotiate diverse constituencies across both U.S. and non-U.S. settings.
Moderator: Vierelina Fernández, Postdoctoral scholar, Center for Latin American Studies
Questions? Contact: cmeador@crimjust.rutgers.edu
THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 20262:30 PM EDTONLINE EVENT
REGISTRATION LINK: https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/fR-6-TPNSg2jjkj18diIcg#/registration
Co-sponsored by:Center for Latin American Studies - Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies - Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies - Department of Sociology
Literary scholar and novelist, Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, joins us to speak on her novel in progress that blends historical research and fiction to address the intertwined histories of slavery and memory in Denmark, Ghana, and Costa Rica.
Join us for our 4th event in the"Undisciplined: Writing & Creating Otherwise" series. Drs. Devyn Spence Benson and Danielle Clealand will be discussing their Afro-Cubans in Florida manuscript and oral history project.
Join us on February 12 th at 4:00 PM EST (ZOOM) for another session of our New Books in Caribbean Studies series! We will discuss recent publications from our very own faculty affiliates, Kaysha Corinealdi , Elena Lahr-Vivaz , and Imani Owens . Click here for the Zoom registration link
Join us for our inaugural RAICCS Theories and Methods Salon on Thursday, December 11 th at 1pm . Lunch will be provided, and we plan to use the opportunity to connect those of us working in Critical Caribbean Studies here at RU and in the surrounding area. The salons will focus on different topics related to the Caribbean research questions and methods central to the work of affiliates. Our first session will focus on Caribbean decolonial ecologies, climate change, and catastrophe. For our December session, we will read a co-authored work by steering committee member, Dr. Kevon Rhiney (Kevon will
This talk approaches Jamaica’s current conjuncture as a field of contradiction and tension in which democracy, security, and the economy are being recomposed. Within this formation, long-standing narratives of sovereignty, dependency, resistance, and violence appear in altered ways. Drawing on conjunctural analysis and the Caribbean tradition of conceptual tension, Lewis argues that attending to these contradictions generates a critical vocabulary for apprehending contemporary Jamaican social life, unsettling the interpretive frames that have long governed Caribbean studies and development discourse. Jovan Scott Lewis is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Haas Distinguished Chair in
We are excited to share the next event in our New Books in Caribbean Studies Book Talk Series! On Tuesday April 1 st at 4:30 PM ( Academic Building West, Room 4052 ) we will be joined by Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe, who will be discussing her new book Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crises. Dark Laboratory, embarks on a historical journey to chart the forces that have shaped these islands: the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the islands’ bounty—including guano,
We are excited to announce our next event in the RAICCS NEW BOOKS IN CARIBBEAN STUDIES BOOK TALK SERIES! Join us on Tuesday, March 11th at 7:30 PM EST with Mónica Jiménez . Dr. Jiménez will discuss her new book Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico. Zoom Registration Link: https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/7vECyQHNQLu8zNvjxmR_YA
This roundtable aims to explore the themes of memory, nature, and relationality. It seeks to understand how these themes are fundamental elements of creation in Patrick Chamoiseau's work. How do these themes, often perceived as commonplaces, find in Patrick Chamoiseau's aesthetics the development of a new perspective on relationality? Cette table ronde vise à explorer les thèmes de la mémoire, de la nature et de la relation. II s'agit de comprendre comment ces thèmes constituent des éléments primordiaux de la création chez Patrick Chamoiseau. En quoi ces thèmes, souvent employés comme des lieux communs, trouventils dans l'esthétique de Patrick Chamoiseau
Join us for a workshop led by Dr. Deborah Thomas on transdisciplinary possibilities and challenges that arise within Caribbean studies theories and research methods. The workshop will focus on Dr. Thomas’ 2021 co-authored article, “Abstraction, Witnessing, and Repair; or, how Multimodal Research can Destabilize the Coloniality of the Gaze,” as well as selections from Dr. Thomas’ work in film. *This event will follow the IRW Distinguished Lecture Series and lunch with Dr. Thomas which RAICCS is co-sponsoring on "Bodied, Knowledge and Sovereignty" starting at 11am. Space is limited, so please register by Friday, November 25th to receive the pre-circulated article.
Join the Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies (RAICCS) on Thursday, October 31st at 4pm for an “Update on the Situation in Haiti,” with speakers Dr. Leslie Alexander, author of Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States , and Nixon Boumba , a Haitian social and environmental activist. We will discuss the historical roots of the current crisis, the role of the United States, what grassroots communities are experiencing, and what Haitian activists are calling for with respect to justice, peace, democracy and sovereignty. Update on the Situation in Haiti*
Join us on October 18th (1-3 PM) for a book talk with Dr. Rivke Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe is Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Amsterdam. Connecting geography, anthropology, and cultural studies, her research focuses primarily on the spatialization and materialization of power, difference and inequality within cities. She has conducted extensive research on urban crime and policing in Kingston, Jamaica. She will be discussing her new book The Rule of Dons: Criminal Leaders and Political Authority in Urban Jamaica. This book talk is a part of the RAICCS New Books in Caribbean Studies Book Talk Series!
Join us on October 3rd from 4:00 - 5:30 PM for a lively conversation with Dr. Jonathan Connolly (History, UIC) who will be speaking about his new book, Worthy of Freedom: Indentureship and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation, with Seth Koven and Julie Stephens, introduction by History PhD Candidate Kiran Baldeo. RAICCS is a co-sponsor of this event.
Juanita De Barros is a Professor in the Department of History at McMaster University and the director of the Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice. She is the former president of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She did her PhD at York University and was a DuBois-Mandela-Rodney fellow at the Department of Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan. She is the co-editor of two book series: “Histories of Slavery and its Global Legacies” (Cambridge University Press) and “Confronting Atrocity: Human Rights and Restorative Justice” (McGill-Queens University Press). Her research concentrates on the
