Repeating Islands

The Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) announces its 2011 conference—Shifting the Geography of Reason VIII: The University, Public Education, and the Transformation of Society—which will take place September 29 to October 1, 2011, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2011.

Description: The CPA invites proposals from scholars in any discipline who aim to “shift the geography of reason” by exploring critical, theoretical, and creative questions about or relating to the Caribbean, its diaspora, and the “global south” more generally, including the South in the North.  We particularly welcome North-South and South-South intersections and/or dialogues. The principal theme for this meeting focuses on the impact and consequences of the current crisis of economic, social, and political priorities, and the social and economic models that are heavily affecting universities, public education in general, and society at large. 

The theme also invites reflections on the general disinvestment in the public good and the growing forces of “racial neoliberalism” and “neoapartheid” that are growing in different regions of the globe as the numbers of formerly colonized peoples and people of color increase in the global north. This includes the criminalization of “illegal immigration” and the ban on ethnic studies in Arizona, student mobilizations in Puerto Rico, England, and Berkeley, among other places, and the effects of the financial crisis in the Caribbean and the global North and South, among other topics. 

While proposals dealing with the specific questions raised by this year’s theme and by the general organizing theme of the CPA are particularly encouraged, we welcome presentations, panels, dialogues, and roundtable discussions that highlight questions about race, space, gender, the legacies of colonization, slavery, and empire, national and transnational communities, sexuality, and issues of identity, decolonization, art, and activism, across migrations and diasporas not only in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora, but globally. We accept proposals in English, French, and Spanish.  We also encourage submission of papers to the official journal of the CPA, the CLR James Journal. 

Abstracts should include: 1) name, position, highest degree obtained, and institutional affiliation (if any), 2) title of proposed paper, panel, roundtable, or discussion, 3) up to one page description of the problem(s) addressed and identification of the sources used per participant.  The committee will review proposals in English, French, and Spanish and will create panels for presentations in those three languages. Panelists are responsible for providing translation if they wish their presentations to be translated. They also need to consider the time for translations as they prepare their panels.

Send submissions for panels, roundtables, discussions, and abstracts of individual presentations by April 15, 2011, by email to caribphil@gmail.com

More information and the form to submit membership payments can be found at http://www.caribbeanphilosophicalassociation.org/

Photo of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras Tower from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torre_Universidad_de-Puerto_Rico_Rio_Piedras.jpg