Caribbean Figurations: Theory, Art, Literature

3 credits · Graduate

This seminar examines how Caribbean writers and artists figure the region—not merely as a geography, but as a site of shifting borders and imperial contest. We will explore how these figurations transmute through global resonance, offering imaginaries that redefine the archipelago, its diaspora, and the globe. How does the Caribbean necessitate a specific aesthetic and theoretical figuration to account for the legacies of enslavement, colonization, and revolution? We will center the figures of relation, ruination, decolonization, and the plantation matrix. By analyzing these modes of representation, we will see how writers figure counter-humanisms that texture our understanding of race, feminism, and queerness, shifting the very coordinates of critical thought.