CFP: Narratives, Aesthetics, and Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean
CALL FOR PAPERS
EL MONTE: Narratives, Aesthetics, and Afrodiasporic Spirituality in the Contemporary Caribbean
November 9 - 10, 2023 | Rutgers University
On the 70th anniversary of the publication of El Monte (1954) by Cuban author and ethnologist Lydia Cabrera, Rutgers University, Baruch College (CUNY), and the Cuban Heritage Collection at
the University of Miami, invite scholars, graduate students, and social and religious activists to discuss pressing issues around Afrodiasporic spirituality and ethnomedicinal technologies in the
cultures of the Hispanic Caribbean.
Often taken as a reference text for those initiated into Santeria and other spiritual traditions, El Monte has become not a book but a guiding concept or code to read the evolution of Afrodiasporic culture in the Hispanic Caribbean. The 70th anniversary of this seminal book and the publication of its first translation into English (Duke University Press, May 2023) demands a fresh look at its contributions and the fields it seeded. This conference will offer a unique opportunity to reflect, from multidisciplinary perspectives, on the complexities and challenging power of Afro-Caribbean agency.
Conference topics may include but are not limited to:
- Race, migrations and ethnicity in the Caribbean
• Diasporic Caribbean: Authors, intellectuals and artists of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries
• Media Studies and animism
• Popular culture and comparative religion
• Translation and literature: Challenges and controversies
• Cuban literature and Caribbean narratives
• Literary representations of gender relations
• Literature, plastic arts, visual narratives: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Historical approaches to colonial, republican, and post-revolutionary literature and culture
• Caribbean relations in literature and the arts
• Queer approaches and spirituality in Caribbean literature
• Exile and memory
Please submit a 250-word abstract in English, Spanish, or Portuguese to
The conference is also supported by the Rutgers University's English Department.
Instructor Antonio Hernandez Matos wins Dissertation Award
Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies Instructor Antonio Hernandez Matos won a Dissertation Award for his 2022 dissertation from the University of Puerto Rico. He received the Aida Caro Costa award for Best Dissertation in History in Puerto Rico, awarded by the Fundacion Rios Pasarell.
Laura De Moya-Guerra Wins 2023-24 Seed Grant
Ph.D student in history, Laura De Moya-Guerra, is one of the two 2023-24 recipients of the Rutgers Digital Humanities Initiative's Graduate Seed Grant Award. Her project is called "From a Plastic Bag to An Online Archive: The Community Archive of the Chinese in Barranquilla, Colombia," a digitized collection of records from a community archive at risk of loss and underrepresentation.
She will present her work at next year's Digital Humanities Showcase.
Congratulations!
Antonio Hernández Matos Publishes Two Pieces on Masculinity and Fashion in Puerto Rico
Full-time LCS instructor, Antonio Hernández Matos, has published two pieces on masculinity and fashion in Puerto Rico. The first, “‘Hombres sí/Hombres nó:’ Fashioning Masculinity in Early Twentieth Century Puerto Rico” was featured in a special issue of Fashion Studies: State of the Field from the journal of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Fashion and Systemic Change. Click to read.
Hernández Matos's second article is called “Dime cómo vistes y te diré quién eres: un acercamiento teórico a la relación moda e identidad,” and was published El Amauta, a journal of the Center for Iberian-American Studies of the University of Puerto Rico-Arecibo. Click to read.
If these articles are of interest, in the next academic year, Antonio Hernández Matos will be teaching the LatCar 326 course Gender, Sexualities, and the Caribbean!
Camilla Townsend Publishes an Article in the Hispanic American Review
May 19, 2023
Professor Camilla Townsend has published an introductory article to a special issue of Duke University Press's journal, Hispanic American Historical Review. Her article is called "At the Crossroads: Introducing New Work in Early America and Colonial Latin America."
"The people of San Germán, Puerto Rico, had gone to sleep for the night. It was 1581, and they had recently relocated their fledgling town inland in an effort to protect it from seaborne attack. But the Kalinagos who broke the people's slumber with sudden violence were well informed, for one of their number had produced a map based on knowledge he acquired while he was living in the town as a slave. He had escaped not long ago and made his way home to the island of Dominica on a raft. Now he had returned with some well-armed brethren. This sixteenth-century version of special forces broke into the houses where they knew other Kalinagos were held, took the people they sought, and then melted away again into the darkness..."
To read more from her article visit this link.