As part of its Conferencias Caribeñas 16, the Institute of Caribbean Studies of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPR-RP), invites the academic community and the general public to “Blogueando y hablando Caribe: ‘Repeating Islands’” [Blogging and Speaking (the) Caribbean: ‘Repeating Islands’], a conversation and tribute to the Repeating Islands co-editors—Dr. Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert (Department of Hispanic Studies, Vassar College) and Dr. Ivette Romero (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Marist College)—for their dedication through the years to the dissemination of news about the wider Caribbean region. The bloggers/blogueras will present on the trajectory of Repeating Islands since its beginning in February 2009.

Dr. Lowell Fiet (Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies) and Dr. María Cristina Rodríguez (School of Humanities, UPR-RP), organizers of the event, will open the activity and present the speakers.

The activity will take place on Thursday, April 9, from 2:30 to 4:30pm at the Manuel Maldonado Denis Amphitheatre (CRA 108) of the Carmen Rivera de Alvarado Building, School of Social Sciences, UPR-RP. The presentation will be followed by discussion with the audience and a reception at the ICS Meeting Room.

The program includes:

*A presentation of the blog as a tool to disseminate news, to serve as liaison between professors and students, outreach for projects, initiatives, calls for submissions, and archiving of research projects and activities, by Elidio La Torre Lagares (School of Humanities, UPR-RP).

*Comments and discussion between users of the Repeating Islands blog: Professors Katherine Miranda, Malena Rodríguez, Don Walicek, Carmen Haydée Rivera, Zaira Rivera, Nalini Natarajan, Loretta Collins and doctoral candidate Zenaida Sanjurjo.

*Questions and comments to editors by panelists and audience.

Description: Since 2009, the Repeating Islands blog is a project that intends to bring the broader Caribbean community closer through the sharing of news and information that transcends the linguistic divide in the region. Our use of the title of Antonio Benítez Rojo’s influential text, The Repeating Island, for the name of our blog represents both our tribute to a lost friend and a simple way of defining our audience–those scholars and readers whose interests focus on pan-Caribbean literatures and cultures. Repeating Islands has served as a news aggregator, presenting information about Caribbean culture—including art, literature, film, music, architecture, theater, dance, celebrations and festivals—events, salient figures, the environment, academic conferences, calls for papers, and occasional bits of gossip. The bloggers will present on the trajectory of Repeating Islands since its inception.

Lisa Paravisini-Gebert works in the fields of literature and cultural studies, specializing in the multidisciplinary, comparative study of the Caribbean. With a PhD in comparative literature from New York University, she is based in the Hispanic Studies Department at Vassar College, where she is holds the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair, and is also a participating faculty member in the Programs in Environmental Studies, Latin American Studies, International Studies, and Women’s Studies. She is the author of a number of books, among them Phyllis Shand Allfrey: A Caribbean Life (1996), Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion (1999), Creole Religions of the Caribbean (2003, with Margarite Fernández Olmos), and most recently, Literatures of the Caribbean (2008).

Paravisini-Gebert has also co-edited a number of collections of essays, for example, Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santería, Obeah, and the Caribbean (1997). Her critical editions of texts by Caribbean women writers include Phyllis Allfrey’s The Orchid House (1997) and It Falls Into Place: The Short Stories of Phyllis Shand Allfrey (2004). Her articles and literary translations have appeared in Callaloo, the Journal of West Indian Literature, the Jean Rhys Review, the Journal of Caribbean Literature, Obsidian, NWIG, Research in African Literatures and the Revista Mexicana del Caribe, among others.

Ivette Romero-Cesareo holds a PhD in French literature from Cornell University. She is professor of Spanish, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, and coordinator of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Marist College, where she teaches Latin American literature, cultures, and cinema. Her research interests include Caribbean testimonial narrative, women’s studies, and visual arts. Her work has been published in books and journals such as Anales del Caribe, Callaloo, Mango Season, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, and Sargasso.

Paravisini-Gebert and Romero-Cesareo have co-edited two volumes together—Women at Sea: Travel Writing and the Margins of Caribbean Discourse (2001) and Displacements and Transformations in Caribbean Cultures (2008).

This lecture will be broadcast LIVE online via the UPR-Rio Piedras web site at http://uprrp.edu

For comments and suggestions on this presentation, feel free to write to ICS director Dr. Lowell Fiet at iec.ics@upr.edu

See the Institute of Caribbean Studies on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/pages/Instituto-de-Estudios-del-Caribe- UPR/146169468754542?ref=sgm\

For other ICS events see http://www.uprrp.edu/?page_id=1413&event_id=101#prettyPhoto

[Photo above from previous post Repeating Island’s Beach Vacation.]