Understanding Modern Caribbean

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Understanding the Modern Caribbean Professor Dessima Williams When it comes to the Caribbean as a region, international relations scholarship and policy discussions are often perceived through the lens of great power competition and the geo-political issues of the north, and ignore or minimize the agency and impact of small island developing states (SIDS) like those found in the Caribbean. Is there a need to alter conceptual and or theoretical frames to better understand the region? The Caribbean has often played an outsized and generally underappreciated role in world affairs as well as in U.S. domestic and foreign policy. The Caribbean region is an exceedingly diverse area in its cultural, socio-political, developmental, diplomatic, environmental, and geo-strategic profiles. Indeed, there is a spectacular quantum to discover intellectually from this region that is simultaneously an old and a new civilization. Also, due to an accumulation and a burst of creative and sustainability activities, there are innumerable opportunities to synthesize new knowledge for the use of decision-makers in policy formulation and programme development. This course will concern itself with both – the intellectual discovery of the region as well as an opportunity to develop and share new hypotheses and knowledge for a Caribbean civilization that is thriving in the 21st century. The broad themes of the course will be predicated on (1), identity and independence; (2), politics and geo-political dynamics; (3), diplomacy; (4), development models and sustainable development; (5), climate change, biodiversity, and the environment; (6), youth, ICT/digitalization, and the future coming toward the region. The course is taught by the inaugural Visiting Distinguished Professor of Global Perspectives Dessima Williams. Ambassador Williams was Grenada’s representative to the Organization of American States, Deputy Governor to the World Bank, and Deputy Permanent Representative to the Inter-American Commission of Women at the time of the US invasion. She then became Grenada’s Ambassador to the United Nations and Special Adviser for the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals to the UN President. She is now President of the Grenada Senate.