For the first time the Dutch-speaking regions of the Caribbean and Suriname are brought into fruitful dialogue with another major American literature, that of the anglophone Caribbean. The results are as stimulating as they are unexpected. The editors have coordinated the work of a distinguished international team of specialists. Read separately or as a set of three volumes, the History of Literature in the Caribbean is designed to serve as the primary reference book in this area. The reader can follow the comparative evolution of a literary genre or plot the development of a set of historical problems under the appropriate heading for the English- or Dutch-speaking region. An extensive index to names and dates of authors and significant historical figures completes the volume. The subeditors bring to their respective specialty areas a wealth of Caribbeanist experience. Vera M. Kutzinski is Professor of English, American, and Afro-American Literature at Yale University. Her book Sugar's Secrets: Race and The Erotics of Cuban Nationalism, 1993, treated a crucial subject in the romance of the Caribbean nation. Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger has been very active in Latin American and Caribbean literary criticism for two decades, first at the Free University in Berlin and later at the University of Maryland. The editor of A History of Literature in the Caribbean, A. James Arnold, is Professor of French at the University of Virginia, where he founded the New World Studies graduate program. Over the past twenty years he has been a pioneer in the historical study of the Négritude movement and its successors in the francophone Caribbean.

Cross-Cultural Studies is the culminating effort of a distinguished team of international scholars who have worked since the mid-1980s to create the most complete analysis of Caribbean literature ever undertaken. Conceived as a major contribution to postcolonial studies, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, and regional studies of the Caribbean and the Americas, Cross-Cultural Studies illuminates the interrelations between and among Europe, the Caribbean islands, Africa, and the American continents from the late fifteenth century to the present. Scholars from five continents bring to bear on the most salient issues of Caribbean literature theoretical and critical positions that are currently in the forefront of discussion in literature, the arts, and public policy. Among the major issues treated at length in Cross-Cultural Studies are: The history and construction of racial inequality in Caribbean colonization; The origins and formation of literatures in various Creoles; The gendered literary representation of the Caribbean region; The political and ideological appropriation of Caribbean history in creating the idea of national culture in North and South America, Europe, and Africa; The role of the Caribbean in contemporary theories of Modernism and the Postmodern; The decentering of such canonical authors as Shakespeare; The vexed but inevitable connectedness of Caribbean literature with both its former colonial metropoles and its geographical neighbors. Contributions to Cross-Cultural Studies give a concrete cultural and historical analysis of such contemporary critical terms as hybridity, transculturation, and the carnivalesque, which have so often been taken out of context and employed in narrowly ideological contexts. Two important theories of the simultaneous unity and diversity of Caribbean literature and culture, propounded by Antonio Benítez-Rojo and +douard Glissant, receive extended treatment that places them strategically in the debate over multiculturalism in postcolonial societies and in the context of chaos theory. A contribution by Benítez-Rojo permits the reader to test the theory through his critical practice. Divided into nine thematic and methodological sections followed by a complete index to the names and dates of authors and significant historical figures discussed, Cross-Cultural Studies will be an indispensable resource for every library and a necessary handbook for scholars, teachers, and advanced students of the Caribbean region.

This volume explores Caribbean literature from 1800-1920 across genres and in the multiple languages of the Caribbean.

This history for the first time charts the literature of the entire Caribbean, the islands as well as continental littoral, as one cultural region. It breaks new ground in establishing a common grid for reading literatures that have been kept separate by their linguistic frontiers. Readers will have access to the best current scholarship on the evolution of popular and literate cultures in the various regions since their earliest emergence."The History of Literature in the Caribbean" brings together the most distinguished team of literary Caribbeanists ever assembled, cutting across ideological commitments and critical methods. Differences in point of view between individual contributors are left intact here as the sign of the colonial inheritance of the region. Introductions and conclusions to the various sections of the History written by the respective subeditors, set them in proper perspective. The unique synoptic aspect of the History lies in its comprehensiveness and its range, which are unequaled."Contributors" A. James Arnold, Julio Rodriguez-Luis, H. Lopez Morales, Maria Elena Rodriguez Castro, Silvio Torres Saillant, Seymour Menton, Ian I. Smart, Efrain Barradas, Raquel Chang-Rodriguez, Carlos Alonso, Ivan A. Schulman, W.L. Siemens, William Luis, Gustavo Pellon, Emilio Bejel, Sandra M. Cypess, Peter Earle, Adriana Mndez Rodenas, J. Michael Dash, Ulrich Fleischmann, Maximilien Laroche, Rgis Antoine, Lon-Franois Hoffmann, Randolph Hezekiah, Bridget Jones, F.I. Case, Marie-Denise Shelton, Beverly Ormerod, J. Michael Dash, Jack Corzani, Anthea Morrison, Juris Silenieks, Frantz Fanon, Vere Knight.

This volume in the Options for Teaching series recognizes that the most challenging aspect of introducing students to anglophone Caribbean literature--the sheer variety of intellectual and artistic traditions in Western and non-Western cultures that relate to it--also offers the greatest opportunities to teachers. Courses on anglophone literature in the Caribbean can consider the region's specific histories and contexts even as they explore common issues: the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and colonial education; nationalism; exile and migration; identity and hybridity; class and racial conflict; gender and sexuality; religion and ritual. While considering how the availability of materials shapes syllabi, this volume recommends print, digital, and visual resources for teaching. The essays examine a host of topics, including the following: the development of multiethnic populations in the Caribbean and the role of various creole languages in the literature oral art forms, such as dub poetry and reggae music the influence of anglophone literature in the Caribbean on literary movements outside it, such as the Harlem Renaissance and black British writing Carnival religious rituals and beliefs specific genres such as slave narratives and autobiography film and drama the economics of rum Many essays list resources for further reading, and the volume concludes with a section of additional teaching resources.

The Caribbean is an exotic but not too distant land, full of rich cultural traditions. The literature of the Caribbean reflects the social, political, and cultural concerns of the region and is a valuable tool for learning about the area and its people. This book includes chapters on roughly a dozen contemporary Caribbean writers. Along with plot summaries, these sections discuss major themes and give close attention to how Caribbean culture figures in the writer's texts. To help students conduct further research, each chapter cites works for further reading.

This volume looks at the ways historians have written the history of the region, depending upon their methods of interpretation and differing styles of communicating their findings. The chapters discussing methodology are followed by studies of particular themes of historiography. The second half of the volume describes the writing of history in the individual territories, taking into account changes in society, economy and political structure. The final section is a full and detailed bibliography serving not only as a guide to the volume but also as an invaluable reference for the General History of the Caribbcan as a whole.

Twelve scholars representing a variety of academic fields contribute to this study of slavery in the French Caribbean colonies, which ranges historically from the 1770s to Haiti's declaration of independent statehood in 1804. Including essays on the impact of colonial slavery on France, the United States, and the French West Indies, this collection focuses on the events, causes, and effects of violent slave rebellions that occurred in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. In one of the few studies to examine the Caribbean revolts and their legacy from a U.S. perspective, the contributors discuss the flight of island refugees to the southern cities of New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk, and Baltimore that branded the lower United States as "the extremity of Caribbean culture." Based on official records and public documents, historical research, literary works, and personal accounts, these essays present a detailed view of the lives of those who experienced this period of rebellion and change.