CALL FOR PAPERS: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Caribbean and its Diasporas

MEMORY/POSTMEMORY, MUSIC & IDENTITY: The Construction of a Diasporic Black West Indian Experience

Saturday 25th April, 2009
Centre for Translation & Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick Coventry, United Kingdom

This is an interdisciplinary conference that seeks to analyze how the shifting boundaries, sense of dislocation, and loss of rootedness are grounded into the construction of the urban transnational Black West Indian identity.

Yaad/Yard-Hip Hop characterizes this identity through the post-immigration generation, who found themselves locked symbiotically in an antagonistic relationship between their parent/s memories of home and their understanding of self within the socio-political context of Britain and the United States. The aim of this conference is to initiate a scholarly interchange between disciplines, in ways that will critically analyze the intersection of memory/rememory/postmemory and popular culture in the construction of the Black West Indian experience in Britain and the United States between the 1960s and the 1990s. Topics may include but are not limited to:

--Geography and identity
--Race/ethnicity/national/dual identities
--Migration, ethnic diasporas, translocal communities
--Place and space
--Music-reggae/dancehall and rap/hip-hop
--Popular culture
--Memory/rememory/postmemory
--Photography
--Film
--Music Videos
--Dance
--Gender, sexuality, and the Black body
--Nation language
--Politics of location

Guidelines for submission:
--Please submit a working title and a brief abstract of 250-300 words
--An abbreviated CV
--Your institutional affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address
--A statement of your audio/visual needs, if necessary

Send all materials electronically as attachments to the contact listed below.
Abstract Due: 31st December 2008 (250-300 words)
Essay Due: 16th March 2009 (MLA style, 8-10 pages)
Conference paper presentations are limited to 20 minutes.
Submit to: La Tasha Brown
Centre for Translation & Comparative Cultural Studies
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7ALUnited Kingdom
Tele.: +44 (0) 24 7652 3655;
Fax: +44 (0) 24 7652 4468
E-mail: LaTasha.Brown@warwick.ac.uk

The authors will be notified about their conference acceptance by February 2, 2009. The final copy of the essay will be due by March 16, 2009. Submissions and questions should be directed to LaTasha.Brown@warwick.ac.uk.