Deadlines:

Registration: June 15th, 2021. Please send name, institution, work title of phd thesis, 250-350 word abstract of thesis excl. bibliography (please list your main references). Please state whether you wish to attend physically if COVID19 allows it or whether you plan online participation, mail to ikh-phdadmin@ruc.dk

Letter of acceptance to participate will be sent by June 25th, 2021 along with recommended readings for the workshop.

Deadline for sending 10 page extract from Thesis: August 5th, 2021 to ikh-phdadmin@ruc.dk

We are very happy to be able to offer lectures by excellent and experienced scholars within different areas of Caribbean studies and beyond in combination with two short and one longer workshop session in which doctoral students will be able to discuss their work in relation the lectures, texts read for the course and inputs from facilitators and colleagues.

Confirmed speakers are:

Professor Michael Bucknor (speaker)

Professor Evelyn O’Callaghan (speaker)

Professor Karen Fog Olwig (speaker)

Professor Mike Niblett (speaker and workshop feedback)

Professor Norbert Wildermuth (Speaker and workshop feedback)

Joined by

Professor Mads Anders Baggesgaard (workshop feedback and moderator)

Professor Heidi Bojsen (workshop feedback, facilitator and moderator)

Depending on the nature of disciplines and ensuing theoretical and methodological approaches represented by the workshop-participants, other colleagues from the organizing doctoral schools may participate in the feedback sessions!

Organized by the Doctoral School of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University in cooperation with the PhD Programme for Art, Literature and Cultural Studies, Aarhus University, https://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/programmes/art-literature-and-cultural-studies/ and the Centre for the Study of the Literatures and Cultures of Slavery, Aarhus University, https://cc.au.dk/slaverystudies/

Over the last decades, Caribbean culture has provided innovative representations of the links and interdependency between nature, culture and social life that have served as inspiration for these relations on a global scale in the disciplines of history, geography, mobility studies, environmental studies or literary and cultural studies.

The aim of the course is to investigate connections between colonialization and its epistemologies of domestication and “usefulness” in the Caribbean and as well as in other localities, engaging with the histories and legacies of colonial and postcolonial plantation, enslavement and representations of mobilities and confinement in the Americas and across the Atlantic. We invite guest speakers and doctoral students to engage in an innovative and original discussion about these connections as they appear in representations and social practices that are also conceived as performative communication practices and constituents in a social and creative communication ecology. Why choose the Caribbean as a matrix and point of departure for these endeavours? Caribbean theorists and authors have contributed and continue to contribute with valuable questions as to how relationality between humans and nature is conceived, communicated and carried out in practice. If the Caribbean serves as an exemplary matrix, we encourage participants working with other localities to engage as well in order to ensure a comparative dimension and to perform the relationality, while respecting attention for local specificities that is part of much Caribbean thinking and social practice.

Interdisciplinary focal points

One focal point could be the current climatic struggles and eco-postcolonial traumas of places such as USVI, Jamaica, Barbados and St. Lucia as well as places beyond the Caribbean such as Greenland, Canada or other regions.

We are interested in how such struggles are connected to the mobility of people and goods as well as flows of information and finance that all are conditioned by different modalities of communication and discursive representation. Caribbean thinkers have also brought special attention to islands, the archipelago and the sea as models for historical thinking with the potential to provide new ways of thinking globality, the global south etc.

As such, we encourage participants, whether they are working with the Caribbean or other localities, to consider the potential heuristic value of ideas such as “the repeating islands” of Antonio Benitez-Rojo, the relational archipelago of Édouard Glissant and Kamau Brathwaite’s focus on rhythm in his conception of nation-language in discussing migration patterns and mobility practices. We would like to investigate to which extent such patterns and practices are not only affected by contemporary communication and media ecologies (Jo Helle-Valle) of the Caribbean, but are performative constituents in that ecology. The social practices of solidarity, refuge, free or forced poetics, mobilities and relation to nature have been described in an anthropological representation by Karen Fog Olwig, historical representation by Nevil A.T. Hall and in literature and philosophy by Édouard Glissant. Many other important thinkers from diverse disciplines can be named. A theoretical and methodological encounter.

The pertinence of connecting theories and studies ensuing from the Caribbean with theories from other parts of the world has already been established, particularly in literature, culture, critical geography, philosophy, history, gender and mobility studies. In addition, we would like to point out the ties with those parts of communication studies that are interested in constructions, negotiations and receptions of information and narratives across different platforms, languages, institutions and regions. As such, we strongly encourage students from all the disciplines above to join us in person or online.

August 25-26, 2021

ECTS: (5). Covers the following (deadlines appear below): - reading of texts proposed by lecturers and workshop facilitators as preparation for the course - producing 10 page paper plus bibliography to be submitted prior to the course - receiving and discussing feedback and lectures with peers and facilitators - attending lectures and workshop

5

Programme

August 25th

Part one

9.15-10.45 Doctoral students meet with facilitators. Each student is invited to pitch their paper to the group and facilitators formulate a general feedback that will emphasize common theoretical and methodological concerns across present disciplines and themes and suggest convergent points with texts read as preparation for the course. Online participation is possible. Facilitator: Heidi Bojsen.

10.45-11.00 Break

11.00-11.10 Introduction to professor emerita Karen Fog Olwig

11.10-11.40 Lecture by professor emerita Karen Fog Olwig on mobility, communication networks and flows in the Caribbean and beyond.

11.40-12.00 Q + A (Moderator: Heidi Bojsen)

12.00-13.00 Lunch

Second part

13.00-13.20 Welcome and Introduction to professor Michael Bucknor /Heidi Bojsen, Stephanie Volder and Anne-Sophie Bogetoft Mortensen.

13.20-14.00 Lecture by professor Michael Bucknor (online or physically present)

14.00-14.20 Q + A (Moderator: Heidi Bojsen)

14.20-14.30 Break

14.30-14.50 Introduction to professor Evelyn O’Callaghan /Stephanie Volder (Aarhus Universitet) and Anne-Sophie Bogetoft Mortensen (Roskilde Universitet)

14.50-15.30 Lecture by professor O’Callaghan

15:30-15:50 Q +A (Moderator: Mads Anders Baggesgaard)

15.50-16.20 Break and refreshments

Third part

16.20-17.30 Doctoral students discuss the lectures of today in relation to own work and texts read for the course

August 26th

9.30 Introduction to professor Mike Niblett / Stephanie Volder (Aarhus Universitet) and Anne-Sophie Bogetoft Mortensen (Roskilde Universitet)

9.45-10.25 Lecture by professor Mike Niblett

10.25-10.45 Q + A (Moderator: Heidi Bojsen)

10.45-11.00 Break

11.00-12.00 Workshop - starts with pitch presentation on the notions of communication and media ecology by Associate professor Norbert Wildermuth (Roskilde University)

12.00-12.45 Lunch

12.45-16.30 Workshop with feedback and breaks

16.30-17.30 Closure

Free for students from Denmark and other countries. Students should be enrolled at a Doctoral School within the Humanities or Social Sciences. All other PhD students are welcome at the price of DKK 1200.00 per ECTS.

Please contact ikh-phdadmin@ruc.dk if you would like to participate without a fee.

An optional reading list for inspiration will be uploaded shortly. The selection of final recommended reading list for workshop will be based on the accepted abstracts and sent out with the letter of acceptance.