General Announcements

As a leading organization for Caribbean historians, the ACH is in a position to speak to and for the concerns of the field as a whole. In addition the our own conference, publication prizes, and fellowships, we monitor the resources offered by other organizations to keep our members up-to-date on conferences, publications, fellowships, and other opportunities that might be of interest. While we monitor H-Caribbean for such notices, we also rely on members to forward such programs or prizes that might be of general interest.

If you would like to propose an item for posting, please contact the ACH Secretary-Treasurer at achsecretary@gmail.com.

 

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition 2012 Frederick Douglass Book Prize (nominations due March 1, 2012).

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition is pleased to announce the 2012 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, an annual award for the most outstanding nonfiction book published in English on the subject of slavery and/or abolition and antislavery movements. Publishers and authors are invited to submit books that meet these criteria. We are interested in all geographical areas and time periods. Please note, however, that works related to the Civil War are acceptable only if their primary focus relates to slavery or emancipation.

Nominations for books published in 2011 will be accepted beginning in January 2012. The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2012. To receive instructions on how to submit a book (information will be available in late fall/early winter), please contact the Gilder Lehrman Center, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, at 230 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, fax (203) 432-6943, or e-mail to gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu.

Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of
Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Yale University
PO Box 208206
New Haven, CT  06520-8206

 

“December Issue,” Slavery & Abolition, journal.

Slavery & Abolition is pleased to announce the publication of its most recent issue (vol. 32, no. 4).  Slavery & Abolition is the only journal devoted in its entirety to a discussion of the demographic, socio-economic, historical and psychological aspects of human bondage from the ancient period to the present. It is also concerned with the dismantling of the slave systems and with the legacy of slavery.  Further information about the journal (including how to access an online sample copy of the journal) is available at:  http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0144039x.asp

 

New Publication, Guide de la recherche en histoire antillaise et guyanaise XVIIe-XXIe siècles (Guadeloupe, Martonique, Guyane, Saint-Domingue), Paris, CTHS, 962 p. , 2 vol. (or Handbook for researchers in French Caribbean History XVII th - XXI th centuries (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guyana, Saint-Domingue, Danielle Bégot ed.). 

Please note the following publication, edited by a long-term ACH member. 

Authors include  : Danielle Bégot, Benoît Bérard, Bernard Camier, Myriam Cottias, Vincent Cousseau, Laurent Dubois, Didier Destouches, Philippe Delisle, Jacques Dumont, Léo Elisabeth, Philippe Hrodej, Gérard Lafleur, Serge Mam Lam Fouck, Gérard Gabriel Marion, Monique Milia-Marie- Luce, Frédéric Régent, François Regourd, Dominique Rogers, Jean-Pierre Sainton, Christian Schnakenbourg, Alain Tirefort.

 

“Independence and After: Dr. Eric Williams and the Making of Trinidad & Tobago,” Institute for the Study of the Americas, now posted online.

To mark the centenary of the birth of Dr Eric Williams and in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of independence in Trinidad and Tobago, a one-day conference INDEPENDENCE AND AFTER: DR ERIC WILLIAMS & THE MAKING OF TRINIDAD & TOBAGO was held at the Institute for the Study of the Americas on the 27 September 2001. This conference explored the shaping of Trinidadian politics and society under the Williams’ administration and the legacies of this period today.

The conference was filmed and all panels are now available to view on:
http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/videos-podcasts-and-papers/independence-and-after-dr-eric-williams-the-making-of-trinidad-tobago.html

The Institute is grateful to the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago for their generous funding of this conference.

 

Biographies: The Atlantic Slave Data Network, Call for Database Contributions, Michigan State University.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded “Biographies: The Atlantic Slaves Data Network” (ASDN). The ASDN will provide a platform for researchers of African slaves in the Atlantic World to upload, analyze, visualize, and utilize data they have collected, and to link it to other datasets, which together will complement each other in such a way as to create a much richer resource than the individual datasets alone. To help you better understand our vision we encourage you to visit the project website at SLAVEBIOGRAPHIES.ORG
Project Directors have recently met with representatives from MATRIX, Michigan State University’s digital humanities center, who will create the ASDN website.  MATRIX is currently assessing the needs of the ASDN based upon Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s large dataset for Louisiana and Walter Hawthorne’s smaller dataset for Maranhão, Brazil. But the more examples of datasets we have the better able we will be to define fields, to work through issues of combining data in different electronic formats, and to cope with other challenges we are bound to face. What we need now are additional scholars to share their database structures to help us create and set the parameters of the ASDN.
Any scholars interested in sharing their databases are encouraged to contact the Project Directors at the email addresses posted below. Databases will not be made public unless permission is granted. 
Project Directors:

Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall, ghall1929@gmail.com
Walter Hawthorne, walterh@msu.edu
General Project Information: contact@slavebiographies.org

 

“New West Indian Guide,” online resource.

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids has just published its latest issue at http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/nwig. You  are invited to review the Table of Contents here and then visit the web site to review articles and items of interest--anytime, from  anywhere in the world, gratis. The NWIG on-line will soon be searchable all the way back to its first issue in 1919.

Latest Issue: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids
Vol. 85, No. 1&2 (2011)
Table of Contents: http://www.kitlv-journals.nl/index.php/nwig/issue/view/921

 

Archive of MaComère, available online at the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

The Editors of MaComère, the journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers & Scholars, are pleased to announce that full contents of past issues (1998-2009) are available online at the Digital Library of the Caribbean: http://dloc.com/AA00000079/00002/allvolumes2.  Access to full contents is via delayed open access, with an embargo on the contents of issues published in the last two years.

dLOC patrons are invited to subscribe to the journal to gain access to  full contents of current issues. MaComère is published twice per year in June/July and December/January. Interested parties can subscribe individually or request that their libraries subscribe to the journal.  Subscription information is available at the journal’s website, which is: www.macomerejournal.com<http://www.macomerejournal.com.

Current issues are Volume 12.1 (2010) “Resistant Genealogies,” and  Volume 12.2 (2010), a special issue titled “Women & National Political Struggles in the Caribbean.” Volume 13.1 (2011) on “Women and Theatre in the Caribbean” will be available this summer.

 

“Digitized Slavery Collections,” New York Historical Society, web resource.

The New York Historical Society is pleased to announce online access to fourteen of the most important collections in the library’s Manuscript Department relating to the institution of slavery in the United States and the Atlantic slave trade (https://www.nyhistory.org/slaverycollections/). They include account books and ship manifests documenting the financial aspects of the slave trade, legal documents such as birth certificates and deeds of manumission, and political as well as polemical works. They range from writings by the abolitionists Granville Sharp, Lysander Spooner, and Charles Sumner, to the diary of a plantation manager and overseer of slaves in Cuba, Joseph Goodwin, and that of a former slave in Fishkill, N.Y., James F. Brown. Other personal papers include two works by John Clarkson concerning his involvement in the settlement of Sierra Leone by free blacks, and a journal describing the travels of two Quakers in the West Indies, Mahlon Day and John Gurney. The site also provides access to the archives of abolitionist organizations such as the New-York Manumission Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, as well as the records of the African Free School, documenting the education of free blacks in early nineteenth-century New York. With nearly 12,000 pages of text dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these collections constitute a rich archive of primary source materials that will be of value to anyone researching the history of slavery, the slave trade, and the abolitionist movement.

 

“UPDATE: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas—A Visual Record,” University of Virginia, web resource.

This searchable collection of 1,275 images continues to be revised and corrected on a regular basis. Since the last up-date report in August 2007, corrections and modifications have been made to already existing entries, but new images have been added, particularly on the U.S. South and West Africa in the nineteenth century.  The latter include 22 unique, unpublished drawings and watercolors of social life, settlements, and material culture along West African coastal areas, particularly Liberia and what is today Equatorial Guinea (Corisco Island).  These materials are held by the Department of Special Collections of the University of Virginia Library http://www.slaveryimages.org). 

 

Wadabagei:  A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diasporas recently published Vol. 13:1.
 
 Wadabagei is published by the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College - City University of New York (CUNY).  It is a multi-disciplinary journal committed to publishing scholarly articles and creative works on the Caribbean and its Diaspora. It is also committed to facilitating the exchange of ideas among Caribbean scholars worldwide.  In this endeavor, it will place special emphasis on the acculturation of Caribbean people in the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. It will also examine aspects of the Caribbean and its Diaspora that have been dynamic in shaping the experiences of the broader Caribbean, but which have not been sufficiently emphasized in the academy in the United States of America and worldwide.  The most recent table of contents appears below.  The journal can be ordered at:
http://www.lexingtonbooks.com/Journals/Wadabagei/TOC.shtml?SKU=V13N1. 

 

“Cuban Heritage Collection,” University of Miami, web resource

The University of Miami is delighted to announce the launch of its newly redesigned Cuban Heritage Collection website, complete with new information and features. The home page allows for quick keyword searches; a research tools section helps users access Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) materials and carry out their research efficiently and effectively. A fellowships section provides information about funding available to students for carrying out research in CHC and shares information about current and past fellows. To learn more visit: http://library.miami.edu/chc/

 

“Slavery and Abolition Portal,” Yale University, online resource database.

Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the
Instructional Technology Group, the Yale Slavery and Abolition portal (http://slavery.yale.edu) is designed to help researchers and Yale students find primary source material related to slavery and its legacies within the university's many libraries and galleries. Users can browse a small catalog of noteworthy collections, learn how to search for additional material, or explore a growing list of external resources.  The portal is still in its early stages, and we welcome input and suggestions from researchers, students, and staff. Future improvements will include an interactive teaching component, dynamic tags, user-submitted material, and more.

“Oxford Online Bibliographies, Atlantic History,” Oxford University Press, online resource database.

The study of Atlantic History examines the transnational interconnections between Europe, North America, South America, and Africa, particularly in the early modern and colonial period. Through this lens, a wide range of national perspectives must be considered. Thus, there are consistently new discoveries, new interpretations, and new theoretical ideas to take into account. This task is made more difficult because a great deal of this work has moved online with the most recent scholarship and research appearing in online databases. Information about the bibliography and subscription is available at http://aboutobo.com/atlantic-history/.

 

The Tom Pohrt Photograph Collection at the Cuban Heritage Collection.

The Tom Pohrt Photograph Collection at the Cuban Heritage Collection now available online: http://proust.library.miami.edu/findingaids/index.php?p=collections/control
card&id=1058.   This collection is an invaluable collection of photographic images of Cuba in the 19th and 20th century.  With funding from The Goizueta Foundation, we digitized the entire collection, which includes albumen prints, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and stereographs. We are excited to announce that it the digital collection is now available for online viewing: http://merrick.library.miami.edu/cubanHeritage/chc5252/.

Tom Pohrt, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is an author and illustrator of children's books.  He is also a collector of Cuban photographs, documents, and memorabilia. The University of Miami asked him to write a guest article about his photograph collection.