The Michael Baptista Lecture
Haitian Feminist Epistemologies and Critical Pedagogies In and Outside the Classroom
October 26, 2023
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Celia Romulus. She is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies and the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Discussant: Bianca Beauchemin, York University.
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Archival Justice and Digital Collaborative Scholarship
November 29, 2022
Panel: Embert Charles, Msgr. Patrick Anthony Folk Research Centre (FRC). Melanie White, Georgetown University. Andy Zalkin, Recuerdos de Nicaragua Digital Archive. Stanley H. Griffin, University of West Indies, Mona Campus. Discussant: Debbie Ebanks, York University. Moderator: Miguel Gonzalez, York University.
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Uprooted: Race, Land and Dispossession in Latin America and the Caribbean
March 24, 2022
Panel: Stephen Perz, University of Florida. Lottie Cunningham Wren, CEJUDHCAN. Yaroslava Avila Montenegro, York University. Moderators: Tameka Samuel-Jones and Miguel Gonzalez, York University. Discussant: Kimberly Palmer, York University.
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Envisioning Emancipatory Horizons in the Caribbean and Latin America: Unsilencing the Unthinkable
February 11, 2022
Panel: Roshini Kempadoo, University of Westminster. Courtney Desiree Morris, University of California, Berkeley. Gina Athena Ulysse, University of California, Santa Cruz. Chair: Celia Romulus, York University.
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Urban Spatial Justice and Human Security in the Caribbean and Latin America
November 30, 2021
Panel: Alexandra Abello Colak, London School of Economics. Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University. Jovan Scott-Lewis, University of California, Berkeley. Discussant: Beverley Mullings, Queen's University. Moderator: Luisa Sotomayor, York University.
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The Transnational Case for Reparations: Repair, Redress and Emancipation
March 31, 2021
Panel: Esther Ojulari, Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento – CODHES, Colombia. Clissio Santana,Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil. Amy Strecker, University College Dublin, Ireland. Nora Wittmann, Author, “Slavery Reparations Time is Now.” Moderated by Michele Johnson, Professor of History and Associate Dean, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University.
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The Caribbean Case for Reparations: Remembrance, Reclamation and Restorative Futures
March 18, 2021
Panel: Natasha Lightfoot,Associate Professor of History, Columbia University, New York. Verene A. Shepherd, Professor of History, Director of the Centre for Reparations Research, University of the West Indies, Regional HQ, Mona. Cikiah Thomas, Chair, Global Afrikan Congress, Toronto. Chevy Eugene (Discussant), PhD Candidate, Social and Political Thought, York University. Moderated by: Michele Johnson, Professor of History and Associate Dean, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University.
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Critical but Expendable: Migration, Securitization, Racialization in (Unequal) Nation States
February 11, 2021
Panel: Evelyn Encalada Grez, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. Manuel Galaviz, University of Texas at Austin, USA. Angelique V. Nixon, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Chris Ramsaroop, Justicia For Migrant Workers and OISE, University of Toronto, Canada.
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Fly Me to the Moon: Imagining a Future Beyond Extractions
November 11, 2020
Panel: Esther Figueroa, Director of Fly Me to the Moon. Doona Ashamock, Indigenous Climate Action. Ali Kazimi, York University. Rachel Goffe, University of Toronto. Andil Gosine, York University. Tameka Samuels-Jones, York University. Rob Connell, University of California (was not able to participate).
- To access Esther Figueroa's manifesto, please click here.
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Central American Migrants in Limbo: Transit Experiences and Grassroots Responses
March 11, 2020
Panel: Gio Bat'z, New Mexico State. Elizabeth Oglesby, University of Arizona. Adalberto Ramos, Centro de Recursos para Migrantes.
Discussant: Francisco Rico-Martinez (FCJ Refugee Centre)
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The Coloniality of Disaster: Race, Empire and Emergency in Puerto Rico, USA
May 10, 2019
Keynote Speaker: Yarimar Bonilla. A political anthropologist specializing in questions of sovereignty, citizenship and race across the Americas.
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Activism, Archives, and Performance: Commemorating 40 Years of CERLAC
November 8, 2018
Reflections from Early CERLAC directors
- Alan Simmons (Sociology, York University)
- Liisa North (Politics, York University)
Activism and the Latin American Working Group Collection
- Luis van Isschot (History, University of Toronto)
- Zoe Heyn-Jones (Postdoctoral Fellow, Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas)
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Keynote by Diana Taylor
- Diana Taylor (Performance Studies and Spanish, New York University): “‘Making Presence’: Regina José Galindo, Earth (2013)”
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Violence in Mexico and Canadian Refugee Policy
March 8, 2017
Keynote Speaker: Sergio Aguayo. Professor at El Colegio de Mexico.
Panel: Judy Hellman, York University. Kathy Price, Amnesty International. Loly Rico, Canadian Council for Refugees.
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'Disguise Up De English Language': Louise Bennett's Anansi Poetics
November 3, 2016
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Carolyn Cooper, CD. Retired Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, University of the West Indies (Mona Campus)
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Beyond Memory/Mas alla de la Memoria: Traces of the Past in Struggle for the Future
March 10, 2016
Panel: Gustavo Meoño, Coordinator, Historical Archives of the Ntional Police of Guatemala. Carlos Henríquez Consalvi, Director, Museum of the Word and the Image. Diana Carolina Sierra, History and Women's Studies, University of Michigan.
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Education and Mobilization in Contested Mexico - Situating Ayotzinapa
March 18, 2015
Panel: Jo Tuckman, Journalist, The Guardian. Luis Hernandez, Journalist, La Jornada. Maria Luz Arriaga, Economist, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Hepzibah Munoz, Political Scientist, University of New Brunswick.
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Who Ain't A Slave. Slavery in Fact and in Herman Melville's Fiction
March 26, 2014
Keynote Speaker: Greg Grandin, Yale University.
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March 4, 2010
Keynote Speaker: Patrick Bellegarde-Smith.
'Apocalypse' is not too strong of a word for the event that took place in Port-au-Prince, on January 12, 2010 at 4:53 in the afternoon. One third of the citizenry was affected, and Haitians will have to live with the aftershocks till the middle of the 21st century. "Apocalyptic" is usually the word applied to the entire thrust of Haitian history by reporters and pundits with scant knowledge of Haitian history and culture. It is high time that North Americans learn about a society to which they are intimately linked for ill and good. Proximity has not made for good neighbors. Haitians take solace about the auspicious coming together of the 'stars,' President Obama and Governor-General Michaelle Jean, and the hundreds of thousands of Haitians now Canadian or American citizens, that augurs well for a different historical course between our three nations. What can we now expect? what will transpire in the foreseable future?
Patrick Bellegarde-Smith has a PhD in international relations and comparative politics, but he is most proud of his status as a 'oungan asogwe,' the highest ranking that one can achieve as a priest of Vodou, Haiti's national religion. Transcending religion to become spiritual discipline and worldview, Vodou has impacted all systems and fields in Haitian culture, playing a similar role as Shinto in Japan, Hinduism in India, and Judaism in Israel. Besides key books on Haitian history and social philosophy, Bellegarde-Smith has edited or co-edited a series of volumes on Vodou, Cuban Santeria, and Brazilian Candomble and Umbanda. Several of these books have seen translation into Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He is the grandson of Dantès Bellegarde, Haiti's foremost diplomat of the 20th century, and one of two major philosophers, with Jean Price-Mars, in the country.
September 22, 2006
Keynote Speaker: Nora Cortinas
Argentinean Human Rights Leader and Co-founder of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo - Linea Fundadora (Mothers of May Square)
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Argentina’s 1976 military coup d’état. An estimated 30,000 people were forcibly “disappeared”, tortured and murdered during the seven-year dictatorship that followed. Shortly after her own son’s “disappearance” in April 1977, Nora joined a group of mothers seeking to discover the whereabouts of their children and organized the first of a series of weekly protest marches in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.
Each Thursday afternoon since then, the Mothers have continued to march in the Plaza de Mayo, demanding that the fate of the victims be made known and that justice be served. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo have become an important political force in Argentina and an international symbol of courage and human rights activism.
March 20, 2004
Joint Jagan Lecture
Keynote Speaker: J. Michael Dash
In this lecture, J. Michael Dash explores Haiti’s symbolic destiny, in an effort to “free” Haiti from being relegated symbolically to the margins of world history. He argues for an understanding of the Haitian Revolution as both a foundational moment in modern universalist thought and a point of origin for postcolonial Caribbean societies, one which privileges global interaction and transcends ethnocentric models of nation, race, and identity. In the spirited question period, also captured here, the circumstances of former President Aristide’s recent departure from office, the complexities of internal Haitian politics, and the regional and international context are debated.
Full paper as a PDF file.
May 23, 2001
Keynote Speaker: Amanda Romero
Colombia has received increasing international attention in the past three years in response to the deterioration in the internal war that has affected the country for more than forty years. However, the myth that violence in Colombia is largelyb due to drug trafficking has served to mask the complex historical and political components of an armed conflict that currently represents the most critical issue in the hemisphere.
This paper begins by analyzing one of the most pressing issues of the Colombian conflict: the internal displacement of poor Colombians, its causes and characteristics, and the responses by several actors in society. It relates internal displacement to human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law by different parties in the conflict.
The paper moves on to discuss current problems with the peace process that have developed in tandem with the implementation of Plan Colombia, an ambitious programme based on the assumption that Colombia’s problems are due to the negative effects of drug trafficking. In this context, the paper considers the problematic responses to the Pastrana administration’s appeal for international co-operation, giving particular attention to the concerns of ethnic minorities in Colombia and to the economic interests behind the "war on drugs". It concludes by presenting recommendations from civil society organizations working to overcome Colombia’s long-running conflict.
Full paper as PDF File.
May 23, 1999
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Oscar Arias (former President of Costa Rica)
Globalization has brought significant changes to our political economy, which in turn have affected human development and the search for peace. In order to strive for a world that is compassionate and equitable, globalization must embrace more than technological advances, sophisticated markets and the increasingly rapid movement of people and information. The challenge is to embrace global citizenship - to think about security, democracy, and justice on a worldwide scale.
Full paper as PDF file.
The Diana Massiah Lecture
"The Language of the Blue Clerk"
November 19, 2015
Keynote Speaker: Dionne Brand
This year the Diana Massiah Lecture will feature Dionne Brand. The theme of her talks is: A meditation on what poetry offers to ‘being’ in the diaspora; a consideration of poetry’s possibilities in diaspora.
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November 12, 2014
Keynote Speaker: Espelencia Baptiste
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti’s already poor infrastructure on January 12, 2010 exacerbated the daily challenges many Haitians face. At the best of times, banking in Haiti has been difficult, and the damage the earthquake wrought to telephone land lines made it more difficult for both ordinary Haitians and international agencies to access their accounts and move their money around. Mobile phone use, meanwhile, increased dramatically. Capitalizing on this shift, international agencies introduced mobile phone banking, not only for purposes of short-term recovery but also in the hope that it would increase “financial inclusion” and thus promote development in the long term. Four years later, however, adoption of the technology remains timid. Dr. Baptiste’s talk explores this failure as a window onto the vicissitudes of post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti.
Espelencia Baptiste was born and raised in Haiti, Dr. Espelencia Baptiste is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Kalamazoo College. She specializes in the anthropology of education, ethnicity and nationalism, diasporas, Creole societies, and language and culture, as well as mobile banking, Voodoo, and inheritance in Haiti. She has worked in Saint Lucia, Mauritius, Kenya and Haiti, and her book, How Citizens are Produced and Ethnicity Maintained in Post Colonial Mauritius with Special Attention to the Creoles: An Anthropological Study (Mellen Press) was published in 2012.
November 8, 2013
Keynote Speaker: Deborah. A Thomas
What windows onto the everyday does bearing witness to state violence open for us? The lecture returns to the May 2010 government-sanctioned violence against the inner-city community of Tivoli Gardens in Kingston, Jamaica, to explore the sphere of intimacy-- the small, domestic, pedestrian stories-- that both gives a view of the gendered dimensions of spectacular and structural violence and produces desire related to social and political life.
Deborah A. Thomas is a cultural anthropologist. She is the author of Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (Duke 2011) and Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (Duke 2004).
May 23, 1999
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Oscar Arias (former President of Costa Rica)
Globalization has brought significant changes to our political economy, which in turn have affected human development and the search for peace. In order to strive for a world that is compassionate and equitable, globalization must embrace more than technological advances, sophisticated markets and the increasingly rapid movement of people and information. The challenge is to embrace global citizenship - to think about security, democracy, and justice on a worldwide scale.
Full paper as PDF file.