The 2013 Critical Caribbean Symposium will be held at the College of The Bahamas in Nassau, Bahamas, on November 22-23, 2013. The symposium is dedicated to Barbadian thinker and writer Kamau Brathwaite—“A Splice of Space and Time”: Celebrating the Life and Work of Kamau Brathwaite. The deadline for submissions is October 4, 2013.

Description: Since the early 1950s, Kamau Brathwaite has been one of the leading producers of Caribbean cultural and intellectual discourses. Not just an award winning poet, the richness of Brathwaite’s verse is paralleled only by the depth of his scholarly essays in literary criticism, cultural theory, and history.  With groundbreaking works including Four Plays for Primary Schools (1964), Rights of Passage (1967), Black an Blues (1976), Roots (1993), The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820(1971), History of the Voice: the Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1986)), Braithwaite’s place as a major contemporary poet, philosopher and original literary voice of the Caribbean has been well-established.

The 3rd Annual Critical Caribbean Symposium will not simply honor the legacy of Edward Kamau Brathwaite, the man, but we will also grapple with the grand themes presented within the body of the Brathwaitian oeuvre, including issues of Afro-Caribbean identity, nation language, history, tidalectics, creoleness, and the Caribbean African heritage, among others.

The organizers of the symposium encourage interdisciplinary papers that analyze Brathwaite’s contributions to Caribbean politics, art, culture, language, gender studies and histories.

100-200 word paper abstracts or panel proposals, including 100-200-word panel description along with individual abstracts for up to 4 papers should be submitted to criticalcaribbean@gmail.com

The organizers also invite proposals for alternatives to traditional panel sessions; they particularly encourage submissions of creative work (visual arts, short films, performance pieces, and creative writing) exploring the theme of the symposium.

For more information, please contact the organizers at criticalcaribbean@gmail.com