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. 310.
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, 18701940”, 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. 79117.
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 Inbetween", 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 Palmié, “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), 142158.
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. 138164.
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. 189203.
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. 918.
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.