The Center for Caribbean Studies at Casa de las Américas has shared a call for proposals for the 9th International Colloquium Cultural Diversity in the Caribbean, which will be held from May 15 to 19, 2023, in Havana, Cuba. The main theme this year is “Landscapes, Rights of Nature, and Ecopoetics in the Caribbean.” The deadline for proposals is March 15, 2023.

The history of the Caribbean accounts for natural and environmental processes of particular regional resonance that are based on the threat to its insular and continental territories; environments whose fragility is also sustained by the severe and continuous models of exploitation and extraction of resources since the beginning of the conquest and colonization. Aware of the vicissitudes facing Caribbean environmental culture, it is imperative to rethink landscapes, nature, and the climatic-environmental emergency from academic, artistic, and literary legacies, but also from popular practices, which make up a locus of enunciation revealing epistemological, aesthetic, ethical and political interests.

Thinking of ourselves as Caribbean inexcusably goes through an awareness of the negative impacts that rising temperatures and climate change have on our small islands exposed to extreme weather events, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity, and deterioration of ecosystems. To this, we should add the urgent need to put into action political agendas to safeguard and protect natural landscapes and immovable and environmental heritage that, at the same time, questions the civilizing models implemented up to now. Under this prism, this colloquium proposes to reflect on the paths of a regional ecological thought as a process inherent to our culture, which allows us to revisit past trajectories and found new itineraries from which we can continue building emancipatory paradigms. The presentations will take place as conferences, panels, round tables, book presentations, concerts and exhibitions, based on the following thematic lines:

• Ecological thought and new critical epistemologies in the Caribbean: visions from the natural and social sciences
• Gender and nature: ecofeminisms
• Ecologies of knowledge: original cultures, ancestral knowledge, and rights of nature
• Tourism in a critical and environmental key
• Ecopoetic and ecocritical discourses: nature and environmental crisis in the artistic-literary culture of the region
• Landscapes of disaster and landscapes of waste: imaginaries of the climate debacle
• Memory, history and heritage: routes for sustainable management
• Sustainability and resilience from island ecosystems: public policies, practical alternatives, experiences, projects and scientific and community methodologies

Those interested in participating may send their proposals in Spanish, English, or French. The modalities of presentation and information, to be sent until March 15, 2023 to the emails seccaribe@casa.cult.cu  and diversidadculturalcaribe2023@gmail.com are the following:

Speaker: Curriculum (100 words); Summary of the proposal [200 words, specifying the thematic line(s)].

Panels: Title of the panel and thematic line(s); Name and Curriculum (100 words) of the members (up to four speakers); Summary of each of the presentations (200 words each)

Participant: Curriculum (100 words) Individual speakers or panels may be face-to-face, virtual or mixed.

The way to send us videos of the virtual presentations will be indicated in due course. All modalities will receive an accrediting certificate. For Cuban participants, the admission fee will consist of 150.00 MN for professionals and 50.00 MN for students. These will be paid in cash and in person at the time of official accreditation in the colloquium. For foreign participants, the admission fee will consist of 50.00 Euros and can only be paid one week before the colloquium is held, by means of the payment indication that will be communicated to them in a timely manner. To facilitate your transfer and stay in Cuba, we suggest you contact your travel agency or contact our institution.

For more information, see http://laventana.casa.cult.cu/index.php/2023/01/31/segundo-llamado-a-la-ix-edicion-del-coloquio-internacional-la-diversidad-cultural-en-el-caribe/