ACH 44th Annual Conference
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
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SUNDAY, May 13:
Conference Delegates arrive; pre-registration opens by 4:00pm.
Monday, May 14:
The ACH was founded to help develop scholarship in and about the region. In recognition of this mission, the first two panels of the 2012 conference highlight the history of this year’s host and emphasize the Dutch Caribbean. Moreover, the United Nations declared 2011 as the International Year of People of African Descent, and the remaining panels for the first day address this important theme.
8:30-10:00am— Panel #1: Emancipation as a Continuing Process
Chair: Jacqueline Martis, Independent Researcher
Su Girigori, National Archeological Anthropological Museum Management, "Until the Lion tells his own Story: Identity Awareness through (Re) Writing Curacao's History"
Jeanne Henriquez, Museo Tula, "If the Caterpillar buries itself in the Ground, it will become a Butterfly: The Role of the Museum in the Process of the Emancipation of the Mind"
Charles do Rego, National Archeological Anthropological Museum Management, ""Should the Teaching of History be Part of the Process of Political Emancipation?: A Preliminary Study on History Teaching in Curacao"
10:00-10:15am Break
10:15-11:45am— Panel #2: Suriname from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century
Chair: Rinia Veldhuizen-Doelahasori, University of Suriname
Jerome Egger, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, "Surinamese and Guyanese attempts at Economic Diversification at the end of the Nineteenth and beginning of the Twentieth Century"
Eric Jagdew, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, "Another Dutch Colonial Heritage: The Struggle of the Amerindians and the Maroons in Suriname for Acceptance and Recognition: Peace Treaties and Land Rights"
Rita Tjien Fooh, National Archives of Suriname, "The National Archives of Suriname, Making the Cultural Heritage Accessible: From an Old Dusty Image towards a Modern Image"
Mildred Caprino, Institute for Advanced Teacher Training, Suriname, "The Sisters of Paramaribo, 1930 to the Present"
11:45am-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:30pm— Panel #3: Imagining Freedom: Rebellion, Revolution and Migration in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Circum-Caribbean
Chair: Heather Cateau, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
Leslie Alexander, Ohio State University, "African Americans and the Struggle for Haitian Independence, 1816-1862"
Chrislaine Pamphile Miller, University of California, Santa Cruz, "Land of Promise: Haiti's 19th-century Plan for Freed African Americans"
Linda Rupert, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, ""Slave Rebellion and Inter-colonial Networks in the Southern Caribbean"
2:30-2:45pm Break
2:45-4:15pm— Panel #4: Christian Missionaries: Slavery and Emancipation in the Caribbean and West Africa
Chair: Roy Augier, University of the West Indies, Mona
Claus F.-Stolberg, Leibniz University, "The Moravian Mission and the Emancipation of Slaves in the Caribbean"
Katja F.-Stolberg, Leibniz University, "Emancipated Slaves from the West Indies as Missionaries and Settlers in West Africa"
Katharine Gerbner, Harvard University, "From Literacy to Crucifixion: Moravian Mission Strategy in St.Thomas and Jamaica, 1732-1760"
Jan Huesgen, Leibniz University, "After Slavery: Moravian Mission in St. Croix, 1848-1878"
Ulrike Schmieder, Leibniz University, "Educational Religious Orders and Emancipation in Martinique"
4:15-4:30pm Break
4:30-6:00pm— Panel #5: Pan-Africanism in the Caribbean
Chair: Richard Goodridge, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
Nigel Westmaas, Hamilton College, "'A universal Confraternity among the Race': An Evaluation of the Role and Impact of Marcus Garvey's UNIA in the Development and Context of African Identity and Nationalism in Guyana"
Alan McPherson, University of Oklahoma, "Race, Pan-Africanism, and Resistance to U.S. Occupations, 1915-1934"
Philip Howard, University of Houston, "Converging Ideologies: The Evolution of a Worker's Consciousness among Black Antillean Emigrant Workers in the Cuban Sugar Industry, 1920-1926"
Tuesday, May 15:
8:30-10:00am— Panel #6: Jewish History and Community
Chair: Gail Sanders, The College of the Bahamas
Christian Cwik, Universität zu Köln, "Jewish and New Christian Merchants in the Southern Caribbean, 1500-1700"
Phillipe Girard, McNeese State University, "Isaac Sasportas, Toussaint Louverture, and Jamaica's Failed Slave Uprising of 1799"
Gerard LaFleur, Société d'histoire de la Guadeloupe, "Les juifs des Antilles françaises sous l'Ancien Régime"
Swithin Wilmot, University of the West Indies, Mona, "Jewish Politicians and Black Gentiles in Jamaica: Electoral Politics in the Parishes of St. Mary and Portland in the Post-Slavery Period"
10:00-10:15am Break
10:15-11:45am— Panel #7: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Caribbean
Chair: Alison Games, Georgetown University
Kelsey Flynn, George Washington University, "Designing an English Empire: Guiana and the Amazon Company, 1590-1640"
Melissa Morris, Columbia University "States of Belonging: Challenges to Imperial Dominance in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean"
Verena Muth, Society for Continental American and Caribbean Studies, Austria, "The Tule Proto-State between Disapperance and Historical Reconstruction"
Daniel Richter, MCEAS and University of Pennsylvania, "Colonial Proprieties:The Problem of Barbados and Jamaica in the Restoration Era"
Leslie Theibert, Yale University, "An Empire of Commerce or Conquest: The Formation of Imperial Ideology in Seventeenth-Century Jamaica"
11:45am-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:30pm— Panel #8: Fear and Revolution: Planters, Slaves and Maroons in Jamaica and Saint Domingue
Chair: Gad Heuman, University of Warwick
Trevor Burnard, University of Melbourne, "Fear, Terror and Jamaican Planters in the Eighteenth Century"
John Garrigus, University of Texas, Arlington "The Case of Makandal the Poisoner (1757): War, Religion, and Slave Resistance in Saint-Domingue"
Christer Petley, University of Southampton, "Saint Domingue and 'the Downfall of Jamaica': British-Caribbean Planters in Revolution and War"
Edward Rugemer, Yale University, "Power and Wealth during the Era of the Haitian Revolution: The Career of Charles Douglas, Jamaican Coffee Planter"
2:30-2:45pm Break
2:45-4:15pm— Panel #9: Religion, Power and Discord in the Caribbean
Chair: Roderick McDonald, Rider University
Aviva Ben-Ur, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, "Eurafrican Identity in a Jewish Society: Suriname in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries"
Richard S. Dunn, Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania and Former Director, American Philosophical Society, "Christian Slaves versus Rebel Slaves on a Jamaican Plantation"
Aaron Fogleman, Northern Illinois University "Factors of Failure and Success in the Moravian Missions in Suriname and on St. Thomas, 1732-1765"
Margo Groenewoud, University of the Netherlands, Antilles, "Power and Influence of the Catholic Church on Curaçao Society in the 1960s and 1970s: A New Perspective"
4:15-4:30pm Break
4:30-6:00pm— Panel #10: Caribbean Medical History
Chair: Pedro Welch, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
Jacques Dumont, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, "To Cure in the FWI or to Cure the FWI? Medical Biographies between the Two World Wars"
Debbie McCollin, University of West Indies, St. Augustine "The Pursuit of Disease: A Biography of The Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory, 1953-1961"
Leonard Smith, University of Birmingham, "Reformer; Humanitarian; Racist: The Work of Dr. Thomas Allen at the Jamaica Lunatic Asylum, 1862 – 1887"
Stephen Snelders, Utrecht University, "Mediating between Public and Private Interests: Leprosy and Slavery in Suriname, Eighteenth Century"
Wednesday, May 16:
8:30-10:00am—Panel #11: The Emergence of Caribbean Identities
Chair: Daniel Littlefield, University of South Carolina
Terencia K. Josephs, University of the Southern Caribbean, "Legal Aliens, Indians in Saint Lucia: Indian Responses in a Foreign Landscape, 1859 to 1900"
Rosemarjin Hoefte, KITLV, "Locating Mecca: Religious and Political Discord within the Javanese Muslim Community in Pre-Independence Suriname"
Julie Kim, Fordham University, "Indigenous Alliance and Revolution: The Black Caribs of St. Vincent"
Daniel Livesay, Omohundro Institute, "'Brought up in England at Great Expence': Mixed Race Jamaicans and Privilege Appeals, 1733-1802"
10:00-10:15am Break
10:15-11:45am— Panel #12: Routes of Commerce
Chair: Woodville Marshall, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill
Amy Borgansky, Bard Graduate Center, "The Culture of Cloth in the Eighteenth-Century West Indies"
Shakira Crawford, U.S. Naval Academy, "Consolidating National Borders, Restricting Territorial Waters: Turtle Fishing in the Western Caribbean"
Tara Inniss, UWI, Cave Hill, "American money….English money…and a few Dutch dollars: Migration, Identity and the Saban Diaspora, 1860-1920"
Anne Ulentin, Louisiana State University, "The Role of Free Women of African Descent in Social and Economic Networks in Louisiana, Haiti, and Cuba in the Early Nineteenth Century"
Angela Sutton, Vanderbilt University, "The Non-European Caribbean: Using Royal Slave Trading Company Records to Reconstruct the Social History of Seventeenth-Century Caribbean"
11:45am- noon Break
12:00-1:30pm— Panel #13: Historicizing Bodies in Slavery and Freedom
Chair: Carla Pestana, Miami University
Marisa J. Fuentes, Rutgers University, "'Hanging Matters': Enslaved Women, Bodily Punishments, Death, and 'Spiritual Terror' in Urban Barbados"
Dawn Harris, Stony Brook University, "Pain, the Body, and the Punished Apprentice" Denise Challenger, York University, "Venereal Infected Bodies and the Politics of Sexual Regulation in late Nineteenth-Century Barbados"
Natasha Lightfoot, Columbia University, "Moravian-Style Marriage, Black Women's Unfree Bodies and the Gendered Limits of Emancipation in Antigua"
In the tradition of the Association of Caribbean Historians Conference, Wednesday afternoon is left unscheduled to allow participants the opportunity to explore the historic sites and cultural opportunities of Willemstad and Curaçao.
Thursday, May 17:
8:30-10:00am—Panel #14: Intercolonial Exchanges: Black Liberation in the Age of Slavery
Chair: Claudius Fergus, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
Laura Rosanne Adderley, Tulane University, "'Negroes accustomed to the ideas of liberty': Implications and Consequences of Black British Troops Stationed at Havana in the Nineteenth-Century"
Ada Ferrer, New York University, "Haiti, Antislavery, and Blackness in the Revolutionary Atlantic"
Guadalupe García, Tulane University, "Black Criollos: Mapping Free and Slave Topographies in Mid-Nineteenth-Centruy Havana"
Sara Johnson, University of California, San Diego, "'Animados Por el Ejemplo de los Franceses': Transcolonial Collaboration in Hispaniola"
10:00-10:15am Break
10:15-11:45am— Panel #15: Celebration, Commemoration, and Cultural Expression
Chair: Danielle Begot, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane
Melanie Newton, University of Toronto, “Returns to a Native Land: Indigeneity and Decolonisation in the Anglophone Caribbean"
Joanna Elrick, Vanderbilt University, "The Alchemy of Religious Taxonomy: Popular Religion, 'Magic,' and 'Superstition' in the Colonial Documents of the Portuguese Inquisition"
Bridget Brereton, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, "Colonial Commemorations: How Trinidad Celebrated the Centenary of British Rule and the Quartercentenary of Columbus' Arrival"
Ada McKenzie, College of the Bahamas, "The Contemporary Gullah-Bahamas Connection: St. Helena Island, South Carolina and Red Bays, Andros"
11:45am-1:00pm Lunch
1:00-2:30pm— Panel #16: Courts and Government Institutions
Chair: Virginia Gould, Tulane University
Marvin Chochotte, University of Michigan, "Independent Courts under Occupation: U.S. Empire and Judicial Opposition in Haiti"
Jonathan Dalby, University of the West Indies, Mona, "A Special Kind of Criminality': Prosecutions in Jamaican Slave Courts, 1750-1834'"
Fernando Pico, University of Puerto Rico, "Las Polaridades y los Posicionamientos en los Recuentos de la Revolución Francesa en Tobago"
Frederik Thomasson, Uppsala University, "'Contre la Loi mais en considérant les Circonstances dangereuses du moment:' The Swedish court of law on Saint Barthélemy around 1800"
2:30-2:45pm Break
2:45-4:15pm— Panel #17: The Twentieth-Century Caribbean
Chair: Anne Lebel, Archives Départementales de la Guadeloupe
Karen Eccles, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, "Allied Servicemen vs. Locals: Conflict in early 1940's Trinidad"
Gert Oostindie, KITLV, "Curaçao: Insular Nationalism vis-à-vis Dutch (Post)Colonialism"
Clara Palmiste, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, "Presse féminine et féminisme en Guadeloupe et en République dominicaine dans les premières décennies du XXe siècle"
Jean-Pierre Sainton, Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, "Les débuts du nationalisme aux Antilles Guyane françaises (1956 – 1963) et l'influence algérienne"
4:15-4:30pm Break
4:30-5:30pm ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Friday, May 18:
Local field trip (see preliminary description under “Local Field Trip” on this website).