In conjunction with the Center for Cultural Analysis’ 2015-16 seminar entitled “Archipelagoes,” Rutgers University is sponsoring a current exhibition, From Island to Ocean: Caribbean and Pacific Dialogues. Featuring the work of Juana Valdes and Fidalis Buehler, the exhibition opened on September 1 and will be one view until December 10, 2015, at the Rutgers Art Library. It was produced as a cooperative effort with Brigham Young University.

On October 20, 2015, there will also be an Artist Talk (1:00-2:30pm) and a Panel Discussion and reception (4:40 – 6:30pm).

Archipelagoes: This seminar explores the archipelagic, as both a specific and a generalizable geo-historical and cultural formation across various planetary spaces, including the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, the Caribbean basin, the Malay archipelago, Oceania, and the creole islands of the Indian Ocean. As an alternative geo-formal unit, archipelagoes can interrogate epistemologies, ways of reading and thinking and methodologies, informed implicitly or explicitly by more continental paradigms and perspectives. Keeping in mind the structuring tension between land and water, and between island and mainland relations, the archipelagic focuses also on the types of relations that emerge, island to island, when island groups are seen not so much as sites of exploration, identity, sociopolitical formation, and economic and cultural circulation, but rather, as models.

Seminar Leaders:  Michelle Stephens, Department of English and Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies and Yolanda Martinez San-Miguel, Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature.

For more information, see the Center for Cultural Analysis’ 2015-16 seminar Archipelagoes.

Also see http://iwa.rutgers.edu/home/