This year, Jamaica hosted the Caribbean Studies Association's 34th Annual Conference held at the Hilton hotel in Kiingston recently. Even though I am not formally a member, I couldn't miss the opportunity of a week of lectures by some the region's best scholars. It was a hectic week but I made space on Friday for the session with Locksley Edmondson and Ayele Bekerie, colleagues from Cornell. They shared the panel with Rupert Lewis and Dorith Grant WIsdom discussing Race and Africanicity: Caribbean Perspectives. The room was full (even so early in the morning) and their papers that discussed Afro-Caribbeans in Columbia, Rastas in Africa, Aime Cesaire in Martinique and Peter Abrahams in South Africa demonstrated that 'blackness' as a concept is still being studied seriously in this region despite a new era of post racial theory.
It was also good to sit in on the video and performance events that ran continuously throughout the event. It's just a shame that art history and the visual arts was so under-represented. Next year, perhaps...