To mark Jamaica's and Trinidad & Tobago's 50 years of independence from Britain, York will host a colloquium, book launch and lecture.
Presented by the York Centre for Education & Community (YCEC) and the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC), the colloquium will take place Friday, Nov. 2, from 1 to 5pm, 280N York Lanes, Keele campus. The lecture will follow at 7pm at Vari Hall C.
The book to be launched, Jamaica in the Canadian Experience: A Multiculturalizing Presence, edited by York Professor Carl E. James, director of YCEC, and York humanities Professor Andrea Davis, commemorates Jamaica’s independence by acknowledging the immense and widespread contributions of Jamaica and Jamaicans to Canadian society.
Colloquium opening plenary sessions and panels will include the following participants:
- Seth George Ramocan, consul general of Jamaica in Toronto
- Anthony Stewart of the Department of English at Dalhousie University
- Annette Henry of the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia
- Alissa Trotz of the Caribbean studies program at the University of Toronto
- Honor Ford-Smith of York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies
The symposium is funded by the International Development Research Centre. For more information, visit the CERLAC website. To RSVP, e-mail ycecevents@edu.yorku.ca.
Franklin Knight, the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University will examine 50 years of accomplishments and failures of the first two states to gain 
political independence in the English-Speaking Caribbean. In addition, he will suggest the main challenges for the next 50 years and more.
Franklin Knight
Vidhya Tota-Maharaj, consul general of Trinidad and Tobago in Toronto will deliver the opening remarks.
Knight is one of the most important Caribbean historians of the 20th and early 21st century. His publications include The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford, 1978; 2nd edition, revised 1990); The Modern Caribbean co-edited with Colin A. Palmer (Chapel Hill, 1989); and Contemporary Caribbean Cultures and Societies in a Global Context (Chapel Hill, 2005).
The lecture is co-sponsored by IDRC, the departments of history and humanities, and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program in York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
For more information about the lecture, visit the CERLAC website.
To see other upcoming events at CERLAC, click here.