Caribbean Civilization- Core Course

Trinity –in –Trinidad

Caribbean Civilization- Core Course Core Course Class meets Thursdays @ 1.00-4.00p.m. Fall, 2013

Course Description:

This course introduces students enrolled in Trinity’s Study Abroad program in Trinidad and Tobago to Caribbean Civilization. It does so by means of immersion in Trinidad and Tobago’s society, culture, economy and politics and by means of a study segment of 10 days in the Caribbean region of Costa Rica. The course is grounded in the broad way that Trinidadian Lloyd Best characterized the region:

“When we think of the Caribbean we have in mind a canvas larger than that usually found in the gallery of the colonial mind. Certainly it includes the Antilles- Greater and Lesser- and the Guyanas. These together form the heartland of the system which it is our expressed purpose to change. But many times the Caribbean also includes the literal that surrounds our [Caribbean] sea. Admittedly, it is an extensive shore. And the contours which may be taken to mark it off are still- to an uncomfortable degree- a matter of personal taste. Yet our choice of boundaries is not, for that fact, baseless. For what we are trying to encompass within our scheme is the cultural, social, political and economic foundations of the `sugar plantation' variant of the colonial mind. Hence, we sometimes include Carolina, and Caracas with Kingston and Chacachacare, Corentyne and Camagüey; Recife with Paramaribo, Port of Spain and Pointe-a-Pitre; and British Honduras."

This introduction to Caribbean Civilization and its Trinidadian variant is presented in the broad context of what contemporary scholars call the African and Asian Diasporas in the Americas, including the broadly defined region of the Caribbean.

Class Structure: Each 3 hour class will be preceded by lunch, which will focus on varieties of Caribbean cuisine. The class will begin with a lecture, organized by the course coordinator, Sunity Maharaj. The lecture, with a question and answer period, will last approximately an hour to an hour and a quarter. After a break, students will then discuss the readings assigned for the day. Discussions to be led by Sunity Maharaj-Best, or other program staff and faculty: Florie Blizzard, or Tony Hall, as appropriate. Each class session will end with a relevant film, a creative reading, or other creative way of integrating the concepts of the day with the cultural life of the Caribbean and with students’ own experience as they live and learn in the region.

Course Requirements and Evaluation:

1. Prompt class attendance and full participation. 10% of grade. 2. Moodle posts on each week’s reading and on student responses to each week’s lecture. These posts must be substantial and specific. They should chart the learning curve of each student. They will be read and graded by Florie Blizzard and by Trinity faculty in Trinidad and in Hartford, as appropriate. 25% of grade. 3. Reading assignments. Students will be expected to read all the assigned material registered in the week by week topics below. These readings will be provided by Trinidad program staff and Trinity faculty. They will demonstrate this through discussion, MOODLE posts, and occasional quizzes on the reading, and, as deemed necessary by faculty, a written final exam that links assigned writing to the lectures. 15% of grade. 4. Full participation – attendance and active discussion and written responses on Moodle– in all required academic field trips. 15% of grade. 5. Final paper, which will incorporate student readings, lectures, field trips, in the context of students’ own personal experience. 20 – 25 pages. Guidelines for this assignment will be provided: 35% of grade. Paper guidelines will be developed by Trinity oversight faculty in conjunction with coordinators Sunity Maharaj-Best, Tony Hall, and Florie Blizzard. This final paper will be submitted electronically to program staff or Trinity faculty, as appropriate, one week after the last class session of the semester ends in Trinidad.

Topics, Lecturers, and Readings per week:

Week One – Feeling Human: Caribbean Civilization in Trinidad & Tobago in the Americas. The languages we speak, separately and together.

Lecturer- “Resistance, Survival, and Creation,” Sunity Maharaj- Best

You all share and unlock the common experience of being human in the Caribbean in this group experience.

Readings: Kim Johnson, “The Originals: Notes on the Caribbean Holocaust,” in George Lamming, (Editor), Enterprise of the Indies (Trinidad & Tobago Institute of the West Indies, 1999), pp. 7-11. “ The Political Geography of the Pre-Hispanic Caribbean”, in Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 2012), pp. 1-18; Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005), pp. 243-279. Antonio Benitez- Rojo, “From Plantation to Plantation”, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the postmodern Perspective (Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 33-72. Lloyd Best, "Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom”, Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom: Essays in Honour of Lloyd Best, edited by Selwyn D. Ryan (Trinidad & Tobago, 2003), pp. 1-34. Week Two- Cuisine as a function of the Environment and a Guide to Caribbean Culture in Trinidad

Lecturer- Sunity Maharaj-Best

This class involves a trip to the local market and an introduction to the ingredients and foods used in the local cuisine. In addition to purchasing items for the meal, which you will prepare, it provides an opportunity to share a Caribbean experience through food, to observe, and to interact with the locals in a different environment. Lunch, prepared by Sunity and yourselves, will follow at Sunity’s home.

Readings:

Anna Lydia Vega, “The Story of Rice and Beans,” in George Lamming, (Editor), Enterprise of the Indies (Trinidad & Tobago Institute of the West Indies, 1999), pp. 67-68. Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch, Editors, Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), pp. 1-18. Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Praegar, 2003, orig. pub. Westport, CT: Greenwood Pub. Co., 1972), pp. 64-121. Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus (Knopf & Doubleday, 2012), pp. 357-420.

Week Three- Africa in the Atlantic and via the Americas. From Origins to diaspora.

Lecturer- Dr. Funso Aiyejina

Field Trip: Pan class

Readings: (Choose from the below)

George Reid Andrews, “Introduction,” Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 3- 10. Ben Vinson, “Introduction: African (Black) Diaspora History, Latin American History,” The Americas, 63:1 (2006): 1-18. Lara Putnam, “The Multigenerational Saga of British West Indians in Central America, 1870- 1940”, in Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe (eds), Blacks & Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 278-306. Lara Putnam, “Nothing Matters but Color: Transnational Circuits, the Interwar Caribbean, and the Black International,” in From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution, ed. by Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins. (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 107-129. Cindy Hahamovitch, “’In America Life is Given Away’: Jamaican Farmworkers and the Making of Immigration Policy,” in The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America, Catherine McNicol Stock & Robert D. Johnston (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 134-160. Week Four- Cultural Expressions – the History of Pan and Calypso

Lecturer: Gordon Rohlehr

Readings: To be determined

Week Five- Europeans & Caribbean Civilization: the Spanish Legacy. Introduction to Costa Rica

Lecturer -- TBA

Readings:

Matthew Restall “Invisible Warrior: The Myth of the White Conquistador,” in Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford, 2003), pp. 44-63. Jason M. Colby, “Corporate Colonialism, 1904-1912,” in Colby, The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race and U.S. Expansion in Central America (Cornell U Press, 2011), pp. 79- 117. Ronald N. Harpelle, “Radicalism and Accommodation: Garveyism in a United Fruit Company Enclave,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb. 2012): 1-28. Ronald Harpelle, “White Zones: American Enclave Communities in Central America,” in Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe (eds), Blacks & Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 307-333.

Week Six- Caribbean Costa Rica field experience, October 11 to October 19:

Readings:

Steve Palmer & Ivan Molina (Eds.), The Costa Rica Reader: History, Culture and Politics (Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 131-132; 237-242; 243-46; & 247-48. Trinity-in-Trinidad program staff will provide readings. These must be read before departure to Costa Rica.

Week Seven: Asians in Trinidad and Elsewhere in the Caribbean

Lecturer- Brinsley Samaroo

Readings:

Tamar Diana Wilson, “Introduction to Asians in Latin America and the Caribbean”, in Latin American Perspectives 31: 3 (2004), pp. 1-16. Brinsley Samaroo, “The Caribbean Consequences of the Indian Revolt” in Rattan Lal Hangloo, Editor, Indian diaspora in the Caribbean : History, Culture and Identity (Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), pp. 71-91. Radica Mahase, “‘Plenty a dem run away’: Resistance by Indian Indentured Labourers in Trinidad, 1870–1920,” Labor History, 49:4 (2008): 465–480. Burton Sankeralli, “Indian Presence in Carnival,” Milla Cozart Riggio, Editor, Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad Experience (Routledge, 2004), pp. 76-84. Carlisle Chang, “Chinese in Trinidad Carnival,” Milla Cozart Riggio, Editor, Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad Experience (Routledge, 2004), pp. 85-90.

Week Eight: Religious Practices and Cultures in the Caribbean – Hinduism and Islam

Cultural Immersion overnight experience at the Kendra: Lecturers – Ravi Ji and Gita

Readings:

Ravi Ji, “Traditional Religions: Aesthetics and Sensibilities,” in Enterprise of the Indies, Editors, George Lamming; Lloyd Best (Port of Spain: Trinidad and Tobago Institute of the West Indies, 1999), pp. 146-147. Nasser Mustapha, “Muslims in the Caribbean,” in Rattan Lal Hangloo, Editor, Indian diaspora in the Caribbean : History, Culture and Identity (Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), pp. 43-53. “ Sherry-Ann Singh, “Trinidad Hinduism, 1917-1945: Religious Transformation and Identity Construction,” in Rattan Lal Hangloo, Editor, Indian diaspora in the Caribbean : History, Culture and Identity (Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), pp. 55-69. Aisha Khan, “Mixing Matters: Callaloo Nation Revisited, Callaloo Volume 30, Number 1, (Winter 2007), pp. 51-67. Aisha Khan, “Sacred Subversions? Syncretic Creoles, the Indo-Caribbean, and "Culture's In- between", Aisha Khan, Radical History Review, Issue 89, (Spring 2004), pp. 165-184.

Week Nine: African Religion in the Caribbean: Orisha and Spiritual Baptists

Lecturer: Rawle Gibbons

Stephan Palmie, “Introduction: On predications of Africanity”, in Stephan Palmie (editor), Africas of the Americas beyond the search for origins in the study of Afro-Atlantic religions (Boston: Leiden, 2008), pp. D. V. Trotman, “Reflections on the Children of Shango: An Essay on a History of Orisa Worship in Trinidad,” Slavery & Abolition, 28:2 (2007): 211-34. Alexander Rocklin, “Imagining Religions in a Trinidad Village: The Africanity of the Spiritual Baptist Movement, and the Politics and of Comparing Religions”, New West Indian Guide, Vol. 86, no. 1-2 (2012), pp. 55-79. Stephen D. Glazier, “New World African Ritual: Genuine and Spurious,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Dec., 1996), pp. 420-431. Frank J. Korom and Peter J. Chelkowski, “Community Process and the Performance of Muharram Observances in Trinidad,” TDR, The Drama Review (1988-), Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 150-175. Week Ten- Women and Gender in Caribbean Civilization & Trinidad and Tobago

Lecturer- Rhoda Reddock – or>>

Readings:

Hilary McD. Beckles, “Perfect Property: Enslaved Black Women in the Caribbean,” in Confronting Power, Theorizing Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives in the Caribbean, ed. by Eudine Barriteau (Kingston, Jamaica: The University of the West Indies Press, 2003), 142- 158. Tracey E. Hucks, “’I Smoothed the Way; I Opened Doors’: Women in the Yoruba-Orisha Tradition of Trinidad,” in Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance, ed. R. by Marie Griffith, and Barbara Dianne Savage (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). Rhoda Reddock, “Indian Women and Indentureship in Trinidad and Tobago 1845-1917: Freedom Denied,” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 4 ( December, 2008), pp. 41-68. Patricia Mohammed, “Gender as a Primary Signifier in the Construction of Community and State among Indians in Trinidad,” Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3/4, (September-December 1994), pp. 32-43. Ann Marie Bissessar, “ Breaking the Glass Ceiling: East Indian Women and Educational Mobility in Trinidad & Tobago,” in Rattan Lal Hangloo, Editor, Indian diaspora in the Caribbean : History, Culture and Identity (Delhi: Primus Books, 2012), pp. 143-154.

Week Eleven- Independence & Nationhood in the Caribbean: French, Spanish & British variants

Lecturer- Norman Girvan

Readings:

David Geggus, “The Haitian Revolution,” in Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World: A Student Reader, revised and expanded edition, ed. by Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd. (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2000), 402-418. Franklin W. Knight, “Caribbean Nation Building 1: Haiti and the Dominican Republic” in Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 2012), pp. 138- 164. Franklin W. Knight, “Caribbean Nation Building 2: Cuba” in Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 2012), pp. 164-188. Franklin W. Knight, “Caribbean Nation Building 3: Puerto Rico and the Ambivalent Identity”, in Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 2012), pp. 189- 203. Brian L. Moore, and Michele A. Johnson, “The Cult of Monarchy and Empire: Moulding British Colonial Subjects,” in Moore & Johnson, Neither Led Nor Driven: Contesting British Cultural Imperialism in Jamaica, 1865-1920. (Kingston, Jamaica: Univ. of the West Indies Press, 2004), 271-310. Franklin W. Knight, “Caribbean Nation Building 4: The Commonwealth Caribbean,” in Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 2012), pp. 204-227 Norman Girvan, “New World and its Critics” in Bryan Meeks and Norman Girvan, Editors, The Thought of New World: The Quest for Decolonization (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2010), pp. 1-29.

Week Twelve- Independence & Nationhood in Trinidad & Tobago.

Lecturer- Briget Brereton (?)

Readings:

Milla Cozart Riggio “The Carnival Story- Then and Now,” in Milla Cozart Riggio, Editor, Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad Experience (Routledge, 2004), pp. 39-47. Harvey R. Neptune, “The Turbulent Thirties: Shaking Empire, Making Nation” in Neptune, Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the U.S. Occupation (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 19-50. Harvey R. Neptune, “Laboring over the Yankee Dollar: Work in Occupied Trinidad” in Neptune, Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the U.S. Occupation (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 78-104. Erica Williams Connell, “Introduction: Symposium on the Life and Writings of Eric Williams,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Summer, 2003), pp. 269-273. Anthony Bogues & Brian Meeks, “A Caribbean Life- An Interview with Lloyd Best”, in Bryan Meeks and Norman Girvan, Editors, The Thought of New World: The Quest for Decolonization (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2010), pp. 221-327. Selected sections from this extended interview.

Supplementary Readings:

Peter Manuel, “Five Themes in the Study of Caribbean Music”, in Peter Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Temple, 1995), pp. 232-246; Peter Manuel, “Trinidad, Calypso and Carnival,” in Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Temple, 1995), pp. 183-211; “The Other Caribbean” in Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae, pp. 212-231. Week Thirteen- Foundations of the Externally Propelled Economy: Trinidad in the Caribbean Context

Lecturer- Gregory McGuire

Readings:

Norman Girvan, “Plantation Economy in the Age of Globalization”, in Essays on the Theory of Plantation Economy: a Historical and Institutional Approach to Caribbean Economic Developmen by L. Best & K. Levitt (Jamaica, 2009), pp. xvii-xxii. Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt, “A Historical and Institutional Approach to Caribbean Economic Development”, in Essays on the Theory of Plantation Economy: a Historical and Institutional Approach to Caribbean Economic Development by L. Best & K. Levitt (Jamaica, 2009), pp. 9- 18. Dennis Pantin, “The Caribbean Rentier Economy, State and Society,” in Bryan Meeks and Norman Girvan, Editors, The Thought of New World: The Quest for Decolonization (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2010), pp. 107-121. Bhoendradatt Tewarie & Roger Hosein, “Arthur Lewis, Lloyd Best Development Strategy in Trinidad and Tobago”, in Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom: Essays in Honour of Lloyd Best, edited by Selwyn D. Ryan (Trinidad & Tobago, 2003), 309-352. Norman Girvan, “Pan-Caribbean Perspective: Colonialism, Resistance and Reconfiguration”, Paper presented at a Seminar on “The Caribbean, Strategic Zone in the Americas”, Institute of Latin American Studies of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil, April 24-25, 2012. Franklin G. Knight, “Social Structure of the Plantation Society”, in Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 2012), pp. 85-112.

Week Fourteen: The Carnival Diaspora in the Americas. Playing Mas as a Way of Life.

Lecturer -- Peter Minshall Ruben G. Rumbaut, “The Americans: Latin American and Caribbean Peoples in the U.S.,” in Americas: New Interpretive Essays, (ed.), Alfred Stepan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. John O. Stewart, “Cultural Passages in the African Diaspora: The West Indian Carnival” in African roots/American cultures : Africa in the creation of the Americas / edited by Sheila S. Walker (Bowman 2001), pp. 206-221. Milla Cozart Riggio, “The Festival Heard Round the World: Introduction”, in Milla Cozart Riggio, Editor, Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad Experience (Routledge, 2004), pp. 241-244. Keith Nurse, “Globalization in Reverse: Diaspora and the Export of Trinidad Carnival,” Milla Cozart Riggio, Editor, Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad Experience (Routledge, 2004), pp. 245- 254, Philip Kasintz, “’New York Equalize You?’” Change and Continuity in Brooklyn’s Labor Day,” in Milla Cozart Riggio, Editor, Carnival: Culture in Action: The Trinidad Experience (Routledge, 2004), pp. 270-282.