Black Diaspora Talk at Depaul

Depaul University

Center for Black Diaspora

BLACK ATLANTIC DISCOURSE, THE DIASPORA AND THE DISCIPLINES

The Black Diaspora and a Queer Caribbean Freedom
Lecture & Discussion
Mimi Sheller, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Drexel University
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
2:30-5:30 pm
Rosati Room 300, Richardson Library
2350 North Kenmore Ave, Chicago

The Center for Black Diaspora has entered a partnership with Chicago Amplified, a project of WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio to enhance the outreach of our events in the Chicago community. Select public programs presented by the Center for Black Diaspora are now available for listening as a part of Chicago Amplified, a new web-based audio library of diverse educational events recorded throughout the Chicago region.

Citizenship from Below

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book, Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press).

Citizenship from Below boldly revises the history of the struggles for freedom by emancipated peoples in post-slavery Jamaica, post-independence Haiti, and the wider Caribbean by focusing on the interplay between the state, the body, race, and sexuality. Mimi Sheller offers a new theory of “citizenship from below” to describe the contest between “proper” spaces of legitimate high politics and the disavowed politics of lived embodiment.

“This is a stimulating, thought-provoking book of lasting significance to scholarship on the Caribbean, citizenship, sexuality, and embodiment. The way that Mimi Sheller puts the literatures on embodiment and citizenship into dialogue is impressive and important. After reading her analysis of these two bodies of scholarship, I will never again be able to think about one without considering the other. Citizenship from Below is a very distinguished book, one which will be widely read and discussed.”—Diana Paton, co-editor of Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing

For more information, and to order the book directly from Duke University Press, please visit http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid= 18033

You can now read the introduction to Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom, here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/87835013/Citizenship-from-Below-by-Mimi-Sheller

A book launch will be held at the Caribbean Studies Association 37th Annual Conference with the theme “Unpacking Caribbean Citizenship: Rights, Participation and Belonging”, 28 May to 1 June 2012 in Guadeloupe.

Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and the author of Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica and Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies.

 

Janey Program

2012 JANEY ANNUAL CONFERENCE
20TH ANNIVERSARY

The New School for social research

THURSDAY MARCH 22 2012
1:00 PM TO 8:00 PM

Opening Remarks

Federico Finchelstein, Associate Professor of History, LANG & NSSR
Director of the Janey Program in Latin American Studies

Alcoa Advertisement, Holiday Magazine, 1943

1:00-3:00 First Panel with Former Janey Fellows

Mimi Sheller, Drexel University
“Aluminum Dreams and the Making of Mobile Modernities”

Victoria Crespo, Colegio de México
“Old and New Forms of Dictatorships in Latin America”

Evan Daniel, Cuny Queens College
“Rolling for the Revolution: A Transnational History of Cuban Cigar Makers in Havana,
Florida, and New York City, 1850s-1890s”
Moderator: Louise Walker, Assistant Professor of History, NSSR

3:00-3:15 Coffee Break

3:15-5:00 Second Panel with Current Janey Fellows

Melissa Amezcua Yepiz, Sociology NSSR
Katie Detwiler, Anthropology NSSR
Alberto Fernández, Politics NSSR
Nicolás Figueroa, Sociology NSSR
Luis Herrán, Politics and Historical Studies NSSR
Gema Santamaría, Sociology and Historical Studies NSSR
Moderator: Christian Proaño, Assistant Professor of Economics, NSSR

5:00-7:00 Key note speaker

Javier Auyero, University of Texas at Austin
“A Political Ethnographer’s Sinuous Road”

7:00 Reception

THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
6 E 16TH STREET, ROOM 1103, 11TH FLOOR- WOLFF CONFERENCE ROOM

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Haiti for Sale: La Gonave

Haitian bloggers have been circulating this video of a “Master Plan” for the development of Haiti’s 287 sq mile island of La Gonave as an “international island operated as a business”. It is a remarkable example of the literal carving up of a prostrate country for the development of oil refineries, monocrop plantations, commercial water privatization, cruise ship ports, coast-to-coast all-inclusive resorts, golf courses and luxury villas. There will be small reserves left for the “natives” to live in faux-historic villages where they can be on view in “cultural performances” when not serving as chambermaids and plantation workers. Access will be via first a private executive airport and then by its own international airport, bypassing Haitian national authorities to give developers and tourists easy access to their own little “island paradise”. This loss of sovereignty and citizenship is typical of resort development throughout much of the Caribbean, including current massive developments along the coasts of nearby Jamaica, as seen in our recent screening of Esther Figueroa’s film Jamaica for Sale. But this plan is especially stunning in its comprehensive nature, bald land grab, environmental destruction, and cynical combination of industry, tourism, and property development under the green-washed guise of “renewable energy”. In the context of Haiti’s huge need for post-earthquake reconstruction,  the developer “Global Renewable Energy” claims to be bringing jobs to the desperate people of Haiti, even though most jobs in such developments are usually filled by foreign contracted workers. It is not clear how far this plan has progressed with the Government of Haiti, but everything should be done to stop it now.

Jamaica for Sale

Jamaica for Sale – Philadelphia Premiere: May 6th, 2010, 6pm

Jamaica for Sale: A Documentary About Tourism and Unsustainable Development

Produced & Directed by Esther Figueroa

THURSDAY, MAY 6th, 2010

6-8:30 pm

Ruth Auditorium, Nesbitt Hall (33rd & Market St.), Drexel University

Jamaica for Sale (84mins) is a powerful documentary about the economic, social and environmental impacts of tourism and unsustainable development in Jamaica. The film will be followed by a discussion with Producer/Director Esther Figueroa and Prof. Mimi Sheller

Winner of the Audience Award at the Africa World Documentary Film Festival, the Bronze Palm Award at the Mexico International Film Festival, and the Rising Star Award at the Canada Film Festival

Though the Caribbean receives about five percent of the global tourist trade, it is the region most economically dependent on tourism. Heavily promoted since 1891 as the way to modernization and prosperity, tourism has tragically failed in its promises, as Jamaica is one of the most indebted countries in the world and the third poorest country in the Caribbean. Lively, hard hitting, with powerful voices, arresting visuals and iconic music, Jamaica For Sale documents the environmental, economic, social and cultural impacts of unsustainable tourism development. Filled with wit and penetrating observations from the street wise to highly acclaimed academics, Jamaica For Sale engages with a cross section of Jamaicans: workers, small hoteliers, fishermen, community members, and environmentalists. As Jamaica is irreversibly transformed by massive hotel and luxury condominium development, Jamaica For Sale both documents this transformation and is trying to turn the tide. It is a cautionary tale not just for Jamaica, but all islands in the Caribbean, and all places around the world dependent on tourism or participating in unsustainable development practices.

Hosted by the Center for Mobilities Research & Policy, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies, this event is free and open to the public.

For more information please contact: Mimi Sheller at mimi.sheller@drexel.edu