Representing gender-based violence: literature, performance and activism in the Anglophone Caribbean

Social Change And Gender-Based Violence: Representations In Caribbean Literature And Performance Cultures

Image used on the workshop programme for the project symposium

Our virtual project symposium, Social Change and Gender-based Violence: Representation in Caribbean Literature and Performance Cultures was held between the 22nd and 23rd of November 2022. It was organised by Amílcar Sanatan and Kelsi Delaney.

The symposium aimed to explore the complex and contradictory meanings, discourses, and aesthetics of GBV as represented in print and performance cultures including literary texts, spoken word, calypso, chutney soca and dancehall music, to name a few. In doing so, the symposium sought to explore the ways that literature and performance cultures reciprocally articulate and shape collective unconscious and cultural beliefs around GBV. The symposium aimed to illuminate both the solidarities and divergences of politics that emerge within these genres, attesting to the dynamic regional cultural, racial, national, and personal affiliations and perspectives of artists working in the region.

Symposium Programme Day One: Thursday 22nd September

Welcome

08:00: Jamaica
09:00: Trinidad and Tobago
14:00: England, United Kingdom

Speaker: Dr. Lucy Evans, University of Leicester

Panel 1: Narratives of Gender-Based Violence in Caribbean Literature

08:20: Jamaica
09:20: Trinidad and Tobago
14:20: England, United Kingdom

Chair: Dr. Lucy Evans, University of Leicester

Papers:

  • KV Bailey: The Silent 'Cis' in Gender: Cissexism and Gendered Antagonisms in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night
  • Bastien Bomans: Domestic Violence, Homophobia and Harming the Self: Entangled Gender Perspective under Heteropatriarchy in Ingrid Persaud's Love After Love
  • Marietta Kosma: Gender-based Violence in Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe

Panel 2: Staging Discourses of Gender and Power

09:45: Jamaica
10:45: Trinidad and Tobago
15:45: England, United Kingdom

Chair: Amílcar Sanatan, The University of the West Indies

Papers:

  • Alison McLetchie & Daina Nathaniel: Severe Licking: Calypso Considers Domestic Violence
  • Akilah Lamsee: Spoken Word Poetry Slams Gender-based Violence
  • Amanda McIntyre: Contemporary Baby Doll Masquerade in Caribbean Feminist Practices
  • Matthew Murrell: Black Caribbean Masculinities: Black Ogun

Panel 3: Media Representations of Gender, Bodies and Violence in the Caribbean

11:10: Jamaica
12:10: Trinidad and Tobago
17:10: England, United Kingdom

Chair: Dr. Kelsi Delaney, University of Leicester

Papers:

  • Sue Ann Barratt: The Stories that Tell Us Who We Are: The Unchallenged Tropes of GBV in Newspaper Coverage
  • Natasha Commissiong: 'Racing' Development: Blackness, Digital Feminism and Gender based Violence in the Anglophone Caribbean
  • Denise Springer: Embracing the Viraga: How Barbadian Twitter De/stabilises the Patriarchy

Symposium Programme Day Two: Friday 23rd September

Panel 4: Gender-based Violence: Representations and Resistance

08:00: Jamaica
09:00: Trinidad and Tobago
14:00: England, United Kingdom

Chair: Dr. Gabrielle Hosein, The University of the West Indies

Papers:

  • Lucy Evans & Kelsi Delaney: ‘Another Tragic Woman in a Story’: Representing Gender-based Violence in Lorna Goodison’s Mother Muse
  • Sonjah Stanley Niaah: Aesthetics of Rape and the Dismantling of Dignity in Jamaica: A Caribbean Cultural Studies Perspective
  • Fabian Thomas: Protesting Gender-based Violence through Theatre

Panel 5: Voices and Silences in Indo-Caribbean Literature and Performance Spaces

09:25: Jamaica
10:25: Trinidad and Tobago
15:25: England, United KingdomChair: Dr. Gabrielle Hosein, The University of the West Indies

Papers:

  • Tyrone Ali: When Gender-based Violence Seems Ordained by the Gods: Connecting GBV, Hinduism and Indo-Caribbean Masculinities in Four Trinidadian Literary Texts
  • Victoria Chang: Unsilencing the Victim: Narratives of Sexual Violence in the Novels of Female Indo-Trinidadian Writers
  • Marcus Kissoon: Ramleela: A Space for Empowerment, Sita's Role

Panel 6: Creative Arts - A Caribbean Without Violence

10:50: Jamaica
11:50: Trinidad and Tobago
16:50: England, United Kingdom

Chair: Amílcar Sanatan, The University of the West Indies

Papers:

  • Neala Luna Bhagwansingh: Poetry reading, Trinidad and Tobago
  • Derron Sandy: Spoken word performance, Trinidad and Tobago
  • Shannon T. Smith: Poetry reading, Jamaica/Japan

Conclusion of Symposium and Vote of Thanks

12:00: Jamaica
13:00: Trinidad and Tobago
18:00: England, United Kingdom

Speaker: Dr. Kelsi Delaney, University of Leicester

 

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