Jamaican Organised Crime: Aesthetics and Style

Panels and interactive sessions

Day 1: Friday 16th November

11.00: The Devil’s Dandruff: A Cocaine Trilogy & Modern Cautionary Tale. Work In Progress By Carol Leeming FRSA.

A creative response to a legendary global drug using the medium of drama

12.00: ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’: Bodies, Affect, and Caribbeanized Cityscapes

Interactive session led by Faith Smith (Brandeis University) and Donette Francis (University of Miami)

2.00: Organised Crime and the State

Lucy Evans (University of Leicester), ‘Eco-noir, environmental crime and Esther Figueroa’s Limbo’

Anthony Harriott (University of the West Indies), ‘Power and accountability in the security domain: The extradition of Christopher Coke and the Commission of Enquiry as an instrument of security sector accountability’

Petrina Dacres (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performance Arts), ‘Entangled Histories, Death and Violence in Jamaican Art’

• Chair: Rivke Jaffe

4.00: A Brief History of Blood Money: Reflecting on Corruption and Crime in Contemporary Jamaican Music Videos

Interactive session led by Zakiya McKenzie (University of Exeter)

Day 2: Saturday 17th November

9.30: Urban Imaginaries and the Badman Figure

Faith Smith (Brandeis University), ‘Millennial Posturing?’

David Howard (University of Oxford), ‘The aesthetics and influence of “badmen” and banditry in contemporary Jamaica’

Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam), ‘Pathologies of Infrastructure: Abjection and Connection in Kingston’s Gullies’

• Chair: Tracian Meikle

11.30: Badmanism and Masculinity

Interactive session led by Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies) and Lucy Evans (University of Leicester)

1.30: Affect and Aesthetics in Organised Crime

Donette Francis (University of Miami), ‘Kingston in Miami’

Michael Bucknor (University of the West Indies), ‘Criminal Intimacies: Psycho-Sexual Spatialities of Jamaican Transnational Crime in Garfield Ellis’s Till I’m Laid to Rest (and Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings)’

Tracian Meikle (University of Amsterdam), ‘Memorial Murals and the Aesthetic Work of Maintaining Personhood after Death’

• Chair: David Howard

3.30: Concluding discussion

Concluding discussion reflecting on the progress of the project and future directions

• Chair: Lucy Evans and Rivke Jaffe

5.00: Author readings / Q&A: Representing Kingston

Author reading and Q&A with poet, novelist and broadcaster Kei Miller and novelist and short story writer Kerry Young.

• Chairs: Lucy Evans and Rivke Jaffe