The University of the West Indies, Open Campus

The University of the West Indies, Five Islands

The Antigua and Barbuda Youth Enlightenment Academy (ABYEA)

The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA)

Announce the Call for Papers

For

Our 16^th Annual Conference

October 13–14, 2022

“THE CURRENT STATE OF THE GLOBAL BLACK STRUGGLE”

Greetings one and all—ABSA and ABYEA members and friends, UWI faculty, students and friends at both the Open and the Five Islands Campuses. Yes, it is already time for us to start planning for our 16^th annual country conference. Last year, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had a wonderful online meeting, which enabled us to reflect in very personal and scholarly ways on, “Antigua and Barbuda: During and After COVID-19”. So, once again a heartfelt word of thanks to all who contributed to making it the success it turned out to be, particularly our new UWI colleagues, Dr. Curtis Charles and Coleen Letlow, who delivered our keynote addresses. And let us not forget, Rev. Kortright Davis, and Dr. George Roberts, who made it possible for us to honor prayerfully and musically those who the COVID pandemic had taken from us.

Because this pandemic is far from over, during the past year we have been living through the disruptions and changes that its persistence has brought to our everyday lives, our economies, polities, international relations and to our social movements, old and new. In particular, we will focus this year’s conference on, “The Current State of the Global Black Struggle”, including how it has been affected by this pandemic that is still producing new and infective strains. The global Black struggle has been a long and venerable one, which has produced many great leaders, from Frederick Douglass to Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis and CLR James—names we are all familiar with. From Antigua and Barbuda, our contributions to this worldwide struggle have been the voices of men and women such as King Court, Mary Prince, George Weston, V.C. Bird, Tim Hector, Jamaica Kincaid, and Baldwin Spencer. This struggle has been a long and hard-fought one in which people of African descent have sought to reclaim their freedom and their African heritage from the ravages of white racism and Western colonial domination. Our Struggle for political independence cannot be separated from this historic global struggle of people of African descent.

Human history is an ever-moving drama with struggles like ours experiencing periods of progression and retrogression. After the period of progression in which we, and several other African and Caribbean colonies regained their political independence and experienced periods of economic growth, it seems that since the mid-1980s we have entered a period of retrogression from which we have not been able to extricate ourselves. It is as though we have been caught in a vortex of multiple but overlapping and increasingly powerful hurricanes.

The first of these hurricanes was the White backlash in Western countries, but particularly the U.S., against the achievements of the Black struggle that culminated with the African American Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Two events marked the start of this regressive period of white backlash: first, the 1978 Bakke decision of the Supreme Court that ended policies of affirmative action; second, the economic earthquakes of the neoliberal turn of corporate capital that saw affirmative action as inconsistent with neoliberal policies of deregulation and market fundamentalism. In developing countries, like Antigua and Barbuda, and many African countries, the deregulation of financial markets created forms crypto-financialization of economies, the contraction of forms of crypto-industrialization, and aggravated debt problems that resulted in the IMF imposing austerity programs of “structural adjustment”.

In the U.S., this ending of policies of affirmative action led to increasing demands for reparations on the part of African Americans and other people of African descent. In the U.S., the rising levels of unemployment and poverty associated with neoliberal policies gave rise to policies of mass incarceration and a near trebling of the prison population, which disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic communities. This of course led to major deteriorations in relations between these Black and Brown communities and the police, and eventually to the worldwide protests against the death of George Floyd. And more recently, the May 2022 shooting in a predominantly Black grocery store in Buffalo.

Reinforcing and overlapping with the neoliberal turn was the political hurricane of neo-conservativism in the West and a number of developing countries. This turn supported rising levels of religious and nationalist fundamentalisms, which would intensify into rising levels of xenophobia, racism and fascism in both Western and Eastern Europe. These countries saw rising levels of anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism, along with the rise in popularity of neo-Nazi parties.

The last of these increasingly anti-Black hurricanes that I will mention here was the intensification of the white backlash that followed the election of President Obama in 2008. This backlash placed the Far Right, first in the form of the Tea Party, then in the form of President Trump, in control of the Republican Party and thus at the center of mainstream American politics. Under the shield of the Trump presidency we have seen pre-civil rights era attacks on Black voting rights and the openly racist statements of these Far Right groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and QAnon. This all came to a head with the January 6^th coup attempt to block the legitimate transfer of power to President Joe Biden. The structures of liberal democracy in America barely escaped being overthrown.

As if this was not enough, into this vortex of hurricanes and earthquakes has come this deadly COVID pandemic, which has killed over 15 million people worldwide, and brought lockdowns to economies across our world. These lockdowns have further aggravated already challenged economies, by creating supply chain disruptions, dis-equilibrating labor markets, and initiating cycles of painful wage-eating inflation. It is these overlapping cycles of white backlash, climate change, disruptive neoliberal reforms, regressive neo-conservative politics, attacks on Black voting rights, and eruptions of fascism that frame the current context of the global Black struggle. In short, it is from the regressive and retarding effects of this expanding chain of climate driven storms, political hurricanes, economic disruptions, continuing COVID-19 variants, and exploding outbreaks of anti-black racism that we now have to rescue and preserve the cherished goals of our global Black struggle.

The primary goals of the struggles here in Antigua and Barbuda, and the wider Caribbean, have been for national independence, liberal democracy or democratic socialism, racial equality, gender equality and the reconstructing of our humanity as an Afro-Caribbean people. This has clearly been and still is a Left of Center projection of our future. Consequently, the challenge before us is that of remaining true to these goals and ideals and their advancement in this very changed context of Right Wing instead of Center Liberal dominance.

For our conference, this means that in addition to the major issues that have come out of earlier conferences, such as insular inequality between Barbuda and Antigua, artificial intelligence, an entrepreneurial university, racial equality, gender equality, Antiguan and Barbudan literature, music, history, politics and economic development, we will now have to deal with these significant shifts in the strategic and ideological forces opposing Black liberation. To respond appropriately to these shifts, we will have to be examining more carefully the nature and goals of the Right in the West and how they differ from the goals of its liberal center. At the same time, we will also have to examine the major alternative solutions to current levels of racial domination that have been proposed by Black leaders and activists inside and outside of our Caribbean region. These suggested alternatives have ranged from revolutionary uprising, through pushing back against this conservative ideological war against our struggle for Black freedom and equality, Black nationalism, Black Marxism, Affirmative Action, Reparations, and on to strategies of Black economic development.

In short, for this year’s conference, we will welcome presentations on these troubling shifts in the international order of which we are a part, along with presentations on some of our longer standing themes. Our keynote speaker will address us on this theme of the current state of the global Black struggle.

The University of the West Indies, Open Campus
The University of the West Indies, Five Islands
The Antigua and Barbuda Youth Enlightenment Academy (ABYEA)
The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA)
Announce the Call for Papers
For
Our 15th Annual Conference
October, 14–15, 2021
“Antigua and Barbuda: During and After COVID-19”
Greetings one and all! Yes, we are resuming our tradition of coming together to share thoughts about Antigua and Barbuda, after being blocked from doing so last year by the COVID-19 pandemic. So what better way to recover from this major interruption than to make the impact of this pandemic on Antigua and Barbuda our guiding theme. Although we will be resuming our dialogue, it won’t be in person as has been our custom. Thus, it is going to be an online version of our annual conference as travel is still quite risky, and this is the formal call for papers for our gathering in the Fall. So, do start getting your ideas together. Of course, that means there won’t be any delectable treats to facilitate our exchange of ideas.
Before going any further with this call for papers, on behalf of ABSA and ABYEA members, a warm word of welcome must go out to our new partner in this venture, UWI (Five Islands). Also, a warm word of welcome must go to Coleen Letlow, the new head of our long-standing partner, UWI (Open Campus). We are just moving from strength to strength.
Just in case you have forgotten, the guiding theme of our 2019 meeting was, “After the Ecological and Political Storms: Whither Barbuda’s Development?” Our keynote speaker was the well-known Caribbean environmentalist, Glenn Sankatsing. In 2018, our guiding theme was, “Milestones for Celebration: Antigua and Barbuda at 37, The University of the West Indies at 70, and the Open Campus at 10”. Our keynote speaker was Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of The University of the West Indies. With these preliminaries taken care of, let us return to the details of this call for papers.
As indicated above, the guiding theme of this reunion meeting will be the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Antigua and Barbuda, both now and in the longer run. As scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds, there are many ways in which we can examine the impact of this pandemic. We can look at it through poems and short stories that capture the more personal experiences of this disruptive event. We can look at its impact from a medical/public health perspective, and I hope that some of our doctors and public health professionals will join us and share this perspective. We can look at this pandemic from an ecological perspective. How real are the suggestions that we can expect more of these as a result of growing ecological imbalances across planet earth? Such a strategy would connect with the strong ecological themes of our last conference. Of course, we would like to look at the social impact of the pandemic. Did it, like Hurricane Irma, expose deep fissures and inequalities in our society? Fissures between our social classes, or between Barbuda and Antigua? Was access to care and to vaccines open to all? Our last conference showed that social relations between Barbudans and Antiguans are still very unequal and is thus a major contradiction at the heart of our twin-island state. We must not let it slip off our radar.
Looking at the economic impact of the pandemic is a must for a developing economy like that of Antigua and Barbuda. How has our economy survived the disruptions of COVID-19? Did it have to be rescued by government or international intervention? What did COVID do to our finances, to our businesses and to our developmental plans? We are counting on our economists to supply us with answers to these questions. To complement our look at the economic impact of the pandemic, we will definitely need to have its impact on politics and governmental performance. So political experts and state watchers, let us hear from you.
One last suggestion for paper topics is the impact of the pandemic on Education. Just how disruptive was it for students and administrators at both the secondary and tertiary levels? Was it possible to make smooth transitions from in person to online learning? Was it as smooth in Barbuda as in Antigua, for working class students as it was for middle class students? These are all just suggestions that hopefully will motivate you or trigger topics not mentioned here. So, do let us hear from you with the presentations that you would like to make.
This last theme of the impact of COVID on education gives us some good ideas about who our keynote speaker(s) should be for this particular reunion meeting. In ABSA, we are thinking that this year we are particularly blessed, and should have two keynote speakers: the Principal of our new partner, UWI (Five Islands) and the new Head of our long-standing partner, UWI (Open Campus). This will give us the opportunity give them our special Antiguan and Barbudan welcome, while giving them the opportunity to share their thoughts with us.
This is our call for this year’s gathering. Let us make it a good one. We have lots to celebrate in spite of these being COVID times. So, let us hear from you with abstracts of about a page including your name, the title, a brief description of the presentation you plan to make, and your affiliation. These abstracts will enable us to organize some nice panels out of your presentations. We will need these timely and topical abstracts from you by August, 15th.
Paget Henry Coleen Letlow Curtis Charles Janet Lofgren
President Head Director Editorial Assistant
ABSA UWI (Open Campus) Academic Affairs A&B Review
UWI (Five Islands)

The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua and Barbuda

The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association

The Antigua and Barbuda Youth Enlightenment Academy

Announce the Call for Papers

For

Our 13^th Annual Conference and Distinguished Lecture

MILESTONES FOR CELEBRATION:

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA AT 37, UWI AT 70, AND THE OPEN CAMPUS AT 10

August 16–17, 2018

Greetings once again! Yes, a full year has passed since our last meeting, and it is time for us to begin planning for our 2018 Antigua and Barbuda Country Conference and Distinguished Lecture. So, welcome to the call for papers for the 13^th in this series of annual conferences exploring social life in Antigua and Barbuda. We are hoping that you will join us this year and also consider making a presentation. Last year, our theme was “Journeys in Antiguan/Caribbean Thought and Development”. Under this heading, we explored possibilities for new thinking, new paths and projects for Antiguan/regional development now that the tight grip of neoliberal globalization has been loosening.

This year, we will be moving in a different but definitely related direction, as we cannot separate our region’s development from the growth of its educational resources and capabilities. Focusing on education, this year we will be celebrating three major milestones in the life of our nation and the regional community of which it is a part. These three milestones are: the 37^th year of Antigua and Barbuda’s independence, the 70^thbirthday of the University of the West Indies, and the 10^th anniversary of the formation of the Open Campus of this dynamic University. For the record, the Open Campus was launched in Antigua and Barbuda on July 4, 2008 by the CARICOM heads of government. Let us look at each of the milestones a little more closely.

Since the insurrectionary labor movements of the 1930s and 1940s, which gave birth to our political independence, the nation of Antigua and Barbuda has seen significant changes in the social order of its everyday life, in the nature of its economy, its race and gender relations, and in the popular base of its politics. However, as we saw last year, the replacement after 1980 of Keynesian approaches to national and global economic management by neoliberal ones has created some major challenges and headwinds for us, and also for our larger CARICOM Community. Steering our economies in desired directions has become significantly harder, with growth rates, currency exchange rates, levels of unemployment and other major economic indicators diverging more widely across our region, as well as being more unstable in specific territories, like Antigua and Barbuda. The onset of these more difficult times led one of our major political commentators, Novelle Richards to refer to them as “the locust years”. Thus as we celebrate and reflect on Antigua and Barbuda at 37, we must ask ourselves the question: have we been able to get rid of the plague of political and economic locusts by which we have been infected?

Our second milestone is an equally significant one, as it is impossible to imagine the social and economic development that Antigua and Barbuda has experienced over the past 37 years without the vital educational contributions of the University of the West Indies. This university began in 1948 as a tiny college with 66 students on the campus in Jamaica. Today it has grown into a modern and dynamic institution of higher learning with an enrollment of over 50,000 students on four campuses. It has produced illustrious graduates in many academic fields out of students from all across our region. In producing these graduates the UWI has served our region well, at the same time that it has been a stellar experiment in Caribbean regionalism. Its 70 years of service to Antigua and Barbuda as well as the larger CARICOM Community is definitely an occasion for celebration. Thus we are hoping that many of our illustrious Antiguan and Barbudan graduates of the University of the West Indies will come out and join us in this celebration by both attending and making presentations. Among the illustrious graduates who have already agreed to present are: Prof. Adlai Murdoch, Drs. George and Gwen Roberts, Dorbrene O’Marde, Dr. Hazra Medica, andIan Benn. We want this to be a real Antiguan and Barbudan celebration of a great Caribbean institution.

Our third milestone of celebration, the Open Campus, highlights not just the regional achievements of the UWI, but also it dynamic and growth-oriented nature, which has enabled it to respond and innovatively adapt its older structures to the new and ever expanding educational needs of our region. This dynamic element in the life of the UWI has been very evident here in Antigua and Barbuda. As a non-campus territory, Antigua and Barbuda was first incorporated into the university’s structure through its department of Extra-mural Studies. Later, this outreach to the non-campus territories was organized through the School of Continuing Studies. Today, taking full advantage of the ongoing revolution in information and communications technology, this long-standing attempt at making its services available to as many as possible across our region has, since 2008, taken the form of the Open Campus.

The Open Campus is a predominantly virtual campus. Most of its courses and library resources are online, thus taking full advantage of the digitization of information. This campus has grown rapidly, as it now offers graduate courses, and has a current enrollment of over 20,000 students. Further, the Open Campus has produced many illustrious graduates who have gone on to make great contributions to their societies. As many of these graduates have been from Antigua and Barbuda, we are hoping that a good number you will come out and join us in this celebration of the 10^th birthday of the Open Campus. We are hoping that you will join us with a presentation on how the Open Campus has affected your life, career and the work you are now doing for Antigua and Barbuda or the larger regional community.

As you make your decisions to join us with a presentation, think of the developmental trends in Antigua and Barbuda and at the UWI described above. With these in mind some of the topics you may consider for your presentation are:

Should the UWI open a brick and mortar campus in Antigua and Barbuda?

What would be the advantages that the opening of such a campus would bring to Antigua and Barbuda?

What are some of the rising trends in secondary and tertiary education in Antigua and Barbuda? Are they preparing the rising generation for the virtual world that is rapidly approaching?  

What do you remember most about your UWI years?

How important was your UWI training to what you are doing now?  

As we approach the end of the first term of the Gaston Browne administration, how is Antigua and Barbuda doing with the challenges and headwinds of continuing to grow under conditions of neo-liberal globalization?

Given the relief strategies of the Browne administration and the current aid environment, what will post-hurricane Barbuda look like?

Given the challenges of growing under the current neoliberal regime of global economic management, should the UWI be playing an even more transformative role than it is already doing?

Given the weakness of the Caribbean entrepreneurial sector, how have the courses in business and entrepreneurship offered by the UWI been affecting this deficit?

If you are interested in making a presentation at this 2018 conference, please send us a brief abstract that includes your name, your title and a brief description of the theme of your presentation. We must receive your abstract by May 20, 2018. It will help us to put you on the right panel.

Paget Henry                        Ian Benn                                               Janet Lofgren

President                            Head, UWI Open Campus                    Editorial Assistant

ABSA                                   UWIOC Antigua & Barbuda                  A&B Review of Books

The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua and Barbuda

The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association

and

The Antigua and Barbuda Enlightenment Academy

Present

Our 12^th Annual Conference

and

Distinguished Lecture

“JOURNEYS IN ANTIGUAN/CARIBBEAN THOUGHT AND DEVELOPMENT”

 The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua

August 10–11, 2017

            Greetings All! Yes, it is indeed time for us to start planning for our 2017 meeting. So welcome to the call for papers for the 12^th in the series of annual conferences on Antigua and Barbuda that have been jointly organized by the University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua and Barbuda (UWI) and the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA).  Last year our theme was “Gender Equality in Antigua and Barbuda”. This year it will be new and rising trends in Antiguan/Caribbean thought and their implications for the new global order in which we are now living. This focus on our traditions of thought and the new challenges confronting them was in part suggested by the interests and concerns of our keynote speaker, the distinguished Jamaican philosopher, Professor Lewis Gordon.

            Prof. Gordon, along with Professors Jane Gordon, Aaron Kamugisha and Neil Roberts, last year edited and published a collection of Paget Henry’s essays that is entitled, Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader. This book, which was launched last year in New York, is the basis for the theme of this year’s conference. As we launch this year’s issue of The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, we will also be doing an Antigua and Barbuda launch of this book. Further, serving as the guest editor for this year’s A&B Review of Books, Prof. Jane Gordon has collected many of the essays that were presented at the New York launch and will be joining us for the conference and the launch. Also gracing us with his presence will be the distinguished Ethiopian philosopher, Prof. Teodros Kiros. We hope that you will be interested in presenting a paper at this conference.

By making “Journeys in Antiguan/Caribbean Thought and Development” this year’s conference theme, we are hoping to bring out into the open the new thinking about our future that the changing world is calling forth from us. More specifically, we are hoping that the theme will elicit from you thoughts and concerns about the new paths and policies—economic, political, environmental and cultural—that we should be pursuing now that the era of neoliberal globalization is fast receding. What is likely to take its place? What can we do to shape this emerging order? Will it be better than the neoliberal order for Antigua and the wider Caribbean?

The era of neoliberal globalization, which started in the early 1980s, brought to an end a period of insurgent national development that began in in the late 1930s. This insurgent movement gave us a new collective identity to strive for, a new “We” that was regional and modern in orientation. In the area of culture, we re-affirmed our African heritage, re-valorized our blackness, and linked these cultural changes to the identity of our postcolonial state in the making. In sports, cricket soared to world-class levels as we entered the era of Andy Roberts and Vivian Richards. Calypso and steel band also soared to new heights as we moved to embrace our future.

However, by the late 1970s, this regional development project had entered a period that Guyanese economist, Clive Thomas referred to as one of “permanent crisis”. The regional frame of our nation was severely cracked in 1962, its economic foundations began to be de-stabilized by external events such as rises in oil prices, drops in the price of sugar, and recessions in the advanced Western societies, which were the major sources of demand in our economies. Debt levels began to rise, as well as unemployment, balance of payments and terms of trade problems. Insular party politics became more polarized—the red and the blue in Antigua and Barbuda—leading to rising levels of authoritarianism and corruption. These growing challenges led well-known Antiguan author and politician, Novelle Richards to label these “the locust years”.

The Caribbean and other developing countries had their own answers to these difficulties that were derailing their nationalist projects. These solutions were summed up in the package of reforms that came to be known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO). Then Deputy Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Lester Bird, was a strong supporter of the reforms of the NIEO. At the same time, the Western powers had their own solutions to these growing problems of the developing countries. They were summed up in a set of neoliberal reforms that came to be known as structural adjustment packages (SAPs) or the Washington Consensus.

With bargaining positions severely weakened by their economic difficulties, developing countries were in no position to fight for their NIEO solutions or to resist the imposition of the SAP solutions by the West. Thus, by the early 1980s, over 70 developing countries were forced to implement SAPs, which included the opening local commodity and financial markets to international competition, cutting government spending, privatizing state assets, devaluing currencies, and ending of subsidies as conditions for the loans they needed to address debt and other problems.

In Antigua and other Caribbean territories, this neoliberal order not only ended the period of insurgent nationalist transformation, but forced major shifts in strategies of economic survival. Our industrial sectors collapsed, internet-gaming arose, and financial sectors liberalized and expanded, driven by off-shore banking. In Antigua and Barbuda, all of the economic possibilities and risks that came with this turn to finance and its global liberalization were embodied in the figure of Allen Stanford. He made exceptionally clear the type of investors that international capital markets were allocating to places like Antigua and Barbuda.

In spite of economic life being subjected more firmly to the logic and profit imperatives of capital markets, this was a period that saw significant developments in our cultural life. There were profound changes in gender relations as Antiguan and Barbudan women became more energized and organized. Antiguan and Barbudan writing soared to new heights with the works of Jamaica Kincaid, Edgar Lake and Joanne Hillhouse. At the same time significant advances were being made in the localizing of church music. But in spite of these important developments in the cultural arena, that earlier sense of an emerging nationalist “We” continued to fragment as centrifugal and divisive forces continued to overwhelm centripetal and unifying forces.

Then, in surprising and spectacular fashion, the neoliberal order with its SAPs and self-regulating markets came crashing down in the financial hurricane of 2008. As the developing countries watched the Western countries spend trillions of dollars and trillions of Euros rescuing their economies and not the SAPs they prescribed for us, the legitimacy of the neoliberal order began to dissolve. It place has been taken by a confusing and disturbing dissensus, as far Right voices have moved to the centers of Western political life. The new leader of the United States is a type of person that Antiguans and Barbudans should know very well after living through the spectacular rise and fall of our financial sector. The similarities between the personality of Donald Trump and that of Allen Stanford are inescapable. Their approaches to both wealth and power are very similar, and provide us with valuable clues for understanding the world that we are now in.

            The primary purpose of our conference is to assess where we are today with this “permanent crisis” which has overtaken our nationalist project since the late 1970s. Thus, we need to examine carefully the impact of the neoliberal era on those “years that the locust hath eaten”. Has the SAPs of this era been food or antidote for the locusts of debt, unemployment and rising levels of state authoritarianism? Where are we with the rescuing of our financial sector after its major collapse? After the record of investors allocated to us by international capital markets—Robert Vesco, Stanley Siegal, Bruce Rappaport, Dato Tan, and Allen Stanford, isn’t it time for a new approach to meeting our investments needs? Where are we with the long-standing locusts of party polarization, patronage, and political victimization? What of gender relations? Race relations? What is going on in our worlds of sports and culture? Are we on the rise or decline? What is the likely impact of the Donald Trump presidency on these long-standing issues? Will it make the next few years a time of plenty or years of lean? Given these issues and concerns, some of the topics you should consider for your presentation are the following:

What is the present state of our nationalist project, that project of building a new postcolonial collective “We” after our first 36 years of independence?

How are we doing with our knowledge using and producing sectors? Are they growing or contracting? How connected are they to the main engines our economy?

What are the prospects for our main engine of economic growth, the tourist sector? Is progress being made by our government on proposals that have been made for programs in edu-tourism? That is, mutually beneficial linkages between our educational and tourist sectors.

What can or what have our tertiary institutions been doing to establish or expand programs in edu-tourism?

Is Prime Minister Gaston Browne’s pursuit of a Yida deal and different from deals with Stanford, Dato Tan, Bruce Rappaport and others?

After our very mixed record of attracting quality foreign capitalists, what can we do to strengthen our local entrepreneurs, improve the local capital market, and so reduce our dependence on foreign capital imports?

Are foreign capitalists likely to be even more of the rapacious, profiting without producing type in the Trump era?

With the collapse of neoliberal economics, where or to whom should we, in ABSA and our local policy establishment, turn for economic guidance? Where shall we look for guidance in political theory and the practice of re-organizing states?

We survived the neoliberal era by moving our Labour Parties closer to the Center as Tony Blair did with the British Labour Party. Is it time to return to the Black democratic socialist roots of our nationalist movement and rethink them in our own image and interests?

As we observe China, the U.S., Latin America, and now Africa begin to pull themselves out of the financial collapse of 2008 by various strategies, what should be the strategy by which we navigate our way back to economic growth?

What are the prospects for the Antiguan and Barbudan working class in the years ahead? What are the prospects for race relations?

How will our working class survive the new rounds of automation that are on their way, and the coming shifts in the geography of industrialization as China changes its developmental strategies?

What are the prospects for gender relations? Will women continue to be energized and organized, while men continue to underperform and stay disorganized?

Are sports less effective creative outlets for young men or are they in need of better and more effective organization?

What is our literature or our music saying about all or some of these issues?

What new books on Antigua/Caribbean have come out lately that you would like to write about?

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this 2017 conference, please send us a brief abstract that includes your title, your name, and a brief description of the theme of your paper. These abstracts must be received by May 20, 2017. They will enable us to put you on the right panel.

Paget Henry                            Ian Benn                                  Janet Lofgren

President                                 Head                                       Editorial Assistant

ABSA                                       UWI (Antigua)                         A&B Review of Books

The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua and Barbuda

and

The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association

Present

Our 11^th Annual Conference

and

Distinguished Lecture

“GENDER EQUALITY IN ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA”

 The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua

August 11–12, 2016

            Greetings All! Welcome to the call for papers for the 11^th in the series of annual conferences on Antigua and Barbuda that have been jointly organized by the University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua and Barbuda (UWI) and the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA). Many of the papers from last year’s historic 10^th Anniversary Conference will be published in this year’s issue of The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books. For 2016, the theme of our conference will be “Gender Equality in Antigua and Barbuda”. Our keynote speaker will be Professor Natasha Lightfoot, author of the recently published book, Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation. It is our hope that you will be interested in presenting a paper at this important conference.

            The changing relations between men and women in Antigua and Barbuda have been for some time now an intensely debated social issue. It is the theme of this year’s conference as a result of overwhelming demand. No other suggested topic came close. Clearly the time to take up this issue in the context of this particular forum has come.

            Like many of the other societies of our region and across the globe, Antigua and Barbuda has been going through major changes in gender relations. These changes have been both structural and cultural in nature. That is, they are taking place at the levels of organizations and institutions as well as in the areas of identity construction and the narratives that legitimate our changing male and female identities. These significant changes in gender relations have been driven by the power of four historically reinforcing social movements aimed at changing or reforming the dominant capitalist social order. The first was the Pan African Movement of the early decades of the 20^th century, which re-ignited the struggle against colonialism and anti-black racism in Antigua and Barbuda. The second was the international Workers Movement of the 1930s, which gave rise to the trade union movement in Antigua and Barbuda. Third, were the nationalist and civil rights movements across the Caribbean, Africa and Black America, which brought political independence to Antigua and Barbuda.

            The fourth social movement contributing to current changes in gender relations in Antigua and Barbuda is the International Women’s Movement. This movement and its issues of gender equality were present but definitely submerged in the three previous social movements. Consequently, all four can be seen as a continuing chorus of different voices calling for change in the European-dominated social order of the early 20^th century. The revolutionary and activist practices of the first three movements together with their failure to address the issues of gender equality within their own ranks and in the larger society set the stage for the rise of a global Women’s Movement, which has had very strong responses of support from the women of Antigua and Barbuda.

            Gender inequality in Antigua and Barbuda has a long history, as long as the history of our country. It has African foundations, which established men as political leaders and dominant figures, at the same time that women were restricted primarily to the domestic sphere with only limited roles outside of the home in agriculture, marketing and the public life of lineage groups.

            On these African foundations were imposed the gender relations of the period of colonization and slavery. As a result, these were centuries of colonial de-gendering—the masculinization of African women and the feminization of African men. The subjectivities of both were radically dehumanized—niggerized—as their labor was brutally exploited to generate profits for the sugar plantations. Added to this already extreme level of oppression was the sexual exploitation of Afro-Antiguan and Barbudan women.

            In the post-slavery period, colonial policies of re-gendering according to European patriarchal norms were introduced. This was the era in which the Christian nuclear family was more systematically imposed the structures of the African family that survived the previous period of de-gendering and family disruption. Along with these new policies came the classes in home economics for teaching Afro-Antiguan and Barbudan women how to be good Victorian wives. Outside of the home, much later the fields of teaching and nursing opened as areas of employment for women along with dressmaking, which was done largely in the home. These post-slavery initiatives reached only a tiny percentage of the population. Thus, the majority of men and women occupied creole or bicultural constructions of family life that left Afro-Antiguan and Barbudan women without the specific female protections that were enshrined in either the African or European kinship system.

            This was the particularly disadvantaged position in which the failure of the post-slavery family reforms left Afro-Antiguan and Barbudan women. They were without the protections of African kinship institutions such as the lineage group and bride wealth, and without those that went with the legal status of a European wife. If we add to these the limited opportunities for employment issues such as spousal abuse, we can easily understand why Antiguan and Barbudan women have responded so positively to the feminist appeals and promises of the Women’s Movement.

            The primary purpose of our conference is to assess where we are today with this project of gender equality in the postcolonial period. What have been the new policies adopted by the V.C. Bird, the Lester Bird, Baldwin Spencer and now Gaston Browne Administrations to address the status of women and improve family life for the majority of the population? We can point to obvious areas such as primary, secondary and tertiary education as well as the opening of many new areas of employment for Antiguan and Barbudan women. At the same time, we want to know what are the remaining areas of social life in which Antiguan and Barbudan women still experience gender discrimination. What of pay differentials? What of access to the arena of politics? What of spousal abuse? What of gendered occupations?

            In 1997, in her keynote address to the recently opened Centre for Gender and Development at the University of the West Indies (Mona), Johnetta Cole told her audience: “It is we women who are the major participants in the churches, the backbones they call us, frying the chicken, making the roti, but it is the brothers who are almost always the heads, the leaders. It is we women who take the notes at the meetings, organize the buses for the rallies, go door-to-door to get the votes, but the it is always the brothers who are the Prime Ministers”. Is this where we still are today? And if so, what are we doing about it?

            To address questions like these we suggest the following themes as guides in deciding the exact topic on which you will present:

Women and the structure of the Contemporary Antiguan and Barbudan Family  

Gender policies of postcolonial administrations from Bird to Browne

Gender discrimination in Antigua and Barbuda

Gender and Sexuality in Antigua and Barbuda

Race and Gender in Antigua and Barbuda

Antiguan and Barbudan Women in Party Politics

Women and Education in Antigua and Barbuda

Antiguan and Barbudan women in the media

Growing up female in Antigua and Barbuda

Women in Antiguan and Barbudan music

Women and the Arts in Antigua and Barbuda

Antiguan and Barbudan women in carnival

Women and economic development in Antigua and Barbuda

Recent books by Antiguan and Barbudan women

Women and Calypso in Antigua and Barbuda

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this 2016 conference, please send us a brief abstract that includes your title, your name, and a brief description of the theme of your paper. These abstracts must be received by May 15, 2016. They will enable us to put you on the right panel.

Paget Henry                            Ian Benn                                  Janet Lofgren

President                                 Head                                       Editorial Assistant

ABSA                                       UWI (Antigua)                         A&B Review of Books

The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua and Barbuda

and

the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association

Present

A 10^th Anniversary Conference

“EXPANDING THE INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY OF ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA”

 The University of the West Indies Open Campus Antigua

August 6–8, 2015

            Difficult as it may be to believe, 2015 marks the 10^th anniversary of a continuous collaboration between the University of the West Indies Open Campus, Antigua (UWI) and the Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association (ABSA). Over the past ten years, this UWI/ABSA partnership has put on conferences, exhibitions, dramatic performances, celebrations of the authors and artists of Antigua and Barbuda, and launched the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books. To mark this significant milestone, we are planning another major conference like the one in 2005, which started this very productive partnership. It is our hope that you will be interested in presenting a paper at this important conference. The theme of this anniversary conference will be “Expanding the Intellectual Community of Antigua and Barbuda”.

We will direct our focus at the future possibilities of this intellectual community of which our partnership is a part. We will explore the ways in which we can best expand the reach, vision and capabilities of our intellectual community so that we, as a society, can participate more effectively and assertively in the new world that is being created by the ongoing revolutions in information and communication technologies. Adapting to this rapidly arriving world will require major changes in our systems of primary, secondary and tertiary education, and in collaborations such as the UWI/ABSA partnership. It is also going to require more effective linkages between the knowledge that circulates through these systems and the productive and administrative needs of our economy and polity. Forging these linkages are all the more important now as our political economy, and that of the larger Caribbean, are still in recovery mode from the global financial crisis of 2008. How to help stimulate this kind of growth is the challenge we have set for ourselves for the 10^th anniversary of our partnership. However, before developing this theme in greater detail, let us take a quick backward glance at some of our major achievements of the past decade.

A Little History

            The conference that founded this partnership was held on August 3–5, 2005 at the Jolly Beach Hotel. Its theme was “The Political and Artistic Cultures of Antigua and Barbuda”. In attendance were 25 distinguished scholars and artists of Antigua and Barbuda including Gregson Davis, Jamaica Kincaid, Edgar Lake, Ermina Osoba, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Ellorton Jeffers, Milton Benjamin, Susan Lowes, Natasha Lightfoot, Mali Olatunji and Dorbrene O’Marde. The impetus for this conference was the success of the UPP in the elections of 2004, its implications for the democratic political culture of Antigua and Barbuda, and also for the life of the arts. It was at the closing session of this conference that ABSA was established, and, particularly in response to Edgar Lake’s presentation, the decision taken to launch the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books.

            After a progress report in 2007 at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda, our next big event was another conference, “The Impact of 1968: Then and Now”, which was held at the Multi-purpose Center on August 13–15, 2008. Its theme was the political upheavals of 1968 and their immediate impact on two-party democracy in our nation and also decades later. We also launched the first issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books. Participants included Ermina Osoba, Conrad Luke, Ellorton Jeffers, Robin Bascus, Keithlyn Smith, Sydney Prince, Ian Benn, Vincent Richards, Radcliffe Robbins, Mali Olatunji, Dorbrene O’Marde, and Gaston Browne, then deputy leader of the ALP, and now prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda.

            The following year, in August of 2009, we organized a discussion on “Constitutional Reform in Antigua and Barbuda”, which was led by attorney, Ann Henry. We also launched the second issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books.

            In August of 2010, our partnership launched its Distinguished Lecture Series. This produced several lectures on the Antiguan and Barbudan economy in the period after the Great Recession of 2008, including one on ABS Television. Among the lecturers were Don Charles, Vincent Richards and Paget Henry. And of course we also launched the third issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books.

            2011 was a very busy year for us. In January, we organized a major conference on “Education, Science and Development in Antigua and Barbuda”, at the Hospitality Training Institute. The focus of that conference was on all levels of our educational system, but with a special emphasis on the prospects for a University of Antigua and Barbuda. Participants included Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon (keynote speaker), Jacqui Quinn-Leandro, Minister of Education, Anthony Joseph, Claude Turner, Hiram Forde, Vincent Richards, Vanere Goodwin, Ian Benn, David King, Conrad Luke, Mali Olatunji, and Anthonyson King.

            In August of 2011, we launched the fourth issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, which was preceded by a dramatic performance and exhibition by the arts group, Roots Cultural Connection.

            In August of 2012, we launched the fifth and very special issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books that was edited by Edgar Lake. It was devoted to poetry written by women from Antigua and Barbuda. Contributing poets included, Elizabeth Hart, Veronica Evanson, Valerie Combie, Althea Romeo-Mark, Cynthia Hewlett, and Linisa George. The launch was preceded by a powerful dramatic presentation by members of the Young Poets Society of Antigua and Barbuda.

            2013 was another busy year for us. In January we organized, with the aid of Leonard Tim Hector Memorial Committee/ ACLM, a conference to mark the 10^th anniversary of the passing of our great scholar and activist, Tim Hector. The conference was entitled “Tim Hector, Caribbean Politics and Economic Development“. Participants included David Abdullah (keynote speaker) Aaron Kamugisha, Conrad Luke, Dorbrene O’Marde, Matthew Quest, Linley Winter, Lowell Jarvis, Don Charles and George Goodwin.

            In August of the same year we launched the sixth issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books. This issue celebrated the work of our distinguished theologian Rev. Kortright Davis, and included poems by men from Antigua and Barbuda.

            In 2014, the month of August was a busy one. We organized a conference on “Religion in Antigua and Barbuda”, and launched the seventh issue of the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, which celebrated the latest works of Jamaica Kincaid, Joanne Hillhouse. and Dorbrene O’Marde. The motivation for this conference was concern on the street about religious re-colonization by American mega-churches. Participants included Dr. George Roberts (Keynote speaker and performer), Fr. Reid Simon, Edith Oladele, Rev. Carlwyn Greenaway, Ermina Osoba, and David Spencer.

            These in brief have been our major achievements of the past decade of which we are quite proud. Also, we are certain that they have contributed significantly to the intellectual life of our community.

Growing Our Intellectual Community

            From the names of the scholars mentioned above, and the other educational institutions included in our brief historical sketch, we should now have a clear idea of the proportions of the intellectual community whose growth and expansion will be the focus of our conference. In particular, it should be clear that in carrying out the programs of this partnership between UWI and ABSA, we have had to reach out to Antigua and Barbudan scholars abroad, to the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda, the State College, the Antigua and Barbuda International Institute of Technology (ABIIT), the National Archives, the Antigua and Barbuda Hospitality Training Institute (ABHTI), arts groups like Roots Cultural Connection, and the ministry of education. In short, in practical or working terms, it is this collection of individuals and institutions that constitute the intellectual community that we wish to expand. Our rapidly changing local and global environments demand that we have some clear ideas about the organization and future of this important community, its place in the future of Antigua and Barbuda, and the wider Caribbean.

            Given the legacies of our colonial and postcolonial histories, imagining the future of our community must include work on the fragmented nature of our national identity. This collective identity is most immediately insular (Antiguan and Barbudan), but it is also regional (Caribbean), diasporic (African), imperial (European/American) and now global (digital/cyber). In the strokes of our cricketers, the literature of our novelists and poets, the music of our churches and calypsonians, the writings of our bloggers, the ideals of our politics, and other practices, we can see the dispersed constituents of this potential but still elusive national identity. In spite of this difficult elusiveness, these are some of the vital fragments that must be better woven together and publicly represented. The better integration of these vital pieces is necessary if we are to continue to grow in both individual and collective self-consciousness. This increased self-consciousness is vital for expanding our vision and for moving forward as a community, a nation, a region, a diaspora, and a globe.

            There are at least four good reasons why we should make the growth of our intellectual community the focus of our conference. First, the graduates of our secondary schools are increasing and thus are in need of increasing opportunities for tertiary education. Second, in the fast arriving globalized and digitized world, the Bachelor’s degree will be what the high school diploma was to the industrial era of the second half of the 20^th century. Third, in order for Antigua and Barbuda to make an effective adjustment to this digital era, the volume of technical information circulating through our intellectual community, along with access to it, must increase significantly. Fourth and finally, as our stock of technical knowledge increases so too must the volume of our self-knowledge. That is, the knowledge that we have of ourselves both as individuals and as a people coming out of a history of slavery, racialization and colonization.

            With these concerns in mind, we need to think about the existing limitations of our intellectual community, the factors that may be inhibiting its growth, and what new features it will need if we are to meet the challenges ahead of us. Thus, we need to think about and write papers on how we can deepen the ties between the various institutions that make up the insular base of this community of learning, how to grow some of its institutions, how to increase their output, and how to make them more accessible to larger numbers of students. We should also think of ways in which we can better incorporate the two medical schools on Antigua into our community. In this spirit, partners from other local cultural institutions such as the National Archives and the library will be invited to make suggestions for deepening these ties and to talk about relations with umbrella organizations like ACURIL. At the same time, we must also think of ways in which we can deepen regional, diasporic, and global/cyber ties. An educational expansion of this nature is vital for Antigua and Barbuda’s entry into the more competitive and technological world that is ahead of us.

            Giving the increasing necessity of the Bachelor’s degree mentioned above, the institutions whose growth and expansion have become most urgent are the State College, ABITT, and ABHTI. To meet this growing demand for tertiary education these institutions need to be upgraded and merged to constitute the University of Antigua and Barbuda. The creation of this university should be done in close collaboration with the University of the West Indies to ensure proper accreditation.

            As we consider creating the University of Antigua and Barbuda, we should be clear on the change in our philosophy of education that it represents. Our current philosophy of education has its roots in the 1940s when the University of the West Indies was being founded. One of the clearest formulations of this philosophy was Eric Williams’ 1953 text, Education in the British West Indies. In this landmark volume, Williams suggested that an intellectual community such as ours was either the chambermaid to the existing order or a midwife to the emerging order. In the light of the postcolonial Caribbean societies that were emerging in the 1940s, Williams argued that the colonial system of education had become a chambermaid, watering and tending the inequalities and inadequacies of the dying colonial order of things.

            In its place Williams argued for a system of mass secondary education that was strongly tied to the agricultural nature of our economy, and the creation of a “British West Indian University. He did not want this university to be an elite one like Oxford or Cambridge, but more like an American state university, that would be responsive to our cultural needs and also to the productive needs of our economy. This in a nutshell has been the philosophy guiding our educational goals, decisions and practices.

            With the onset of the digitizing of information and the increasing demand for tertiary education, it should be clear that we must now carefully and appropriately expand this philosophy of education. We need to expand it in four crucial areas. First, we must make a new commitment to improving the quality and reach of secondary education. Second, at the tertiary undergraduate level, a system of island-based BA degree-granting universities or colleges need to be established, replacing AA degree-granting institutions such as our state college. Third, this new generation of universities would be appropriately adjusted versions of emerging digitized universities, such as the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies. Fourth and finally, UWI would then become the primary center for graduate education, granting most of the MA and PhD degrees produced in our region.

            In these island-based universities, special fields of knowledge such as Antigua and Barbuda Studies, Grenada Studies, or Dominica Studies must be developed. These new fields of study would complement the broader fields of Caribbean Studies and Africana Studies and at the same time supply the increased volume of self-knowledge that we need at this time in our national development. In other words, as Caribbean Studies and Africana Studies provided the self-knowledge that supported the earlier nationalist phase of our philosophy of education, so these new fields of study in island-based universities will provide the higher levels of self-consciousness that is now needed for us to move forward. One of the main goals of ABSA and the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books is to help to create the new field of Antigua and Barbuda Studies.

            It is within the framework of such a new philosophy of Caribbean education that we need to think about how we can grow and expand our intellectual community here in Antigua and Barbuda. We must think hard and write papers about making sure that our intellectual community becomes a midwife to the emerging digital order. Even more than when Williams was writing, it is important that these changes and expansions of our community reflect and respond to the informational and productive demands of our economy. Indeed, the emerging order challenges us even more urgently to think about the economic base of our community of learning, how it can generate revenue and provide valuable support to key sectors of our economy. In short, possibilities for deeper synergies between education, tourism, agriculture, government services and entrepreneurial training must be an integral part of the growth of our intellectual community that will be the focus of our 10^th anniversary conference.

            Towards this end we encourage papers on topics such as:

The Arts and the Growth of Self-Knowledge

Carnival and the Arts in Antigua and Barbuda Today

Science and the Growth of Self-knowledge

The Growth in Technical Knowledge Needed by Antigua and Barbuda

Merging the State College, ABITT and ABHTI to Form the University of Antigua and Barbuda

Linking Education to Agriculture and Tourism

What Should the Knowledge Sector of Our Economy Look Like in 2020?

Two-party Democracy in Antigua and Barbuda: An Update

The Antiguan and Barbudan Economy: An Update

Religion in Antigua and Barbuda: Continuing the Conversation

Race in Antigua and Barbuda

An Analysis of Recent Books on Antigua and Barbuda

Current Trends in Antiguan and Barbudan Literature

Current Trends in Antiguan and Barbudan Music

Caribbean Studies and Antiguan and Barbudan Studies

Africana Studies and Antiguan and Barbudan Studies

Antiguan and Barbudan Identity in the Digital Age

If you are interested in presenting a paper at this historic conference, please send us a brief abstract that includes your title, your name, and a brief description of the theme of your paper. These abstracts must be received by February 28, 2015. They will enable us to put you on the right panel.

Paget Henry            Natasha Lightfoot          Ian Benn                    Janet Lofgren

President                Co-organizer                  Head                          Editorial Assistant

ABSA                       ABSA                               UWI (Antigua)           A&B Review of Books