Whither the Caribbean?: Stuart Hall’s Intellectual Legacy
From The Caribbean Commons
2017 Stuart Hall Conference
Place: the University of West Indies, MONA
Conference: 1-3 January 2017
CFP Deadline: 1 February 2017
The Institute of Caribbean Studies and Reggae Studies Unit in association with the Stuart Hall Foundation and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus invite proposals for papers in Cultural Studies or related fields for the 2017 Stuart Hall Conference under the theme ” Whither the Caribbean?: Stuart Hall’s Intellectual Legacy” .
Jamaican-born Stuart Hall can best be described as a cultural theorist and master intellectual. Hall is one of the founding fathers of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and by extension is credited, along with his contemporaries, for the genesis of the field of Cultural Studies. While other West Indian thinkers chose economics and development as their hermeneutic method, diaspora-based Stuart Hall turned to culture as the analytic mode of choice. For him questions of language, diaspora, ideology, politics, mass culture and representation became objects of study and analysis. Although Hall went on to become globally acclaimed as one of the pre-eminent public intellectuals of the 20th century few are aware of how influential his Jamaican background and heritage were in formulating the heterodox positions for which he became known.
This conference will offer the opportunity to reflect both on how the Caribbean and Jamaica influenced Stuart Hall’s thought but also on how we might bring this unorthodox,
paradigm-shifting intellectual?s work home as it were. How can the lens of culture offer alternative approaches to the study of our postcolonial present? How might cultural studies-inflected strategies amplify the ability of policy-makers, educators and technocrats to craft more people-friendly forms of governance? What lessons of negotiating and thinking about social conflict and its management might be embedded in the life and practice of this exemplary public intellectual?
The Stuart Hall Conference invites academics, scholars and artists to honor the late cultural theorist and sociologist by contributing papers that will build on Hall’s ground-breaking contributions.
Themes to be explored include but are not limited to:
The Caribbean Popular
Exploring Stuart Hall’s Intellectual Legacy
Stuart Hall in/on the Caribbean
Re-Imag/in/ing Stuart Hall’sApproach Today
Stuart Hall and the Role of the Public Intellectual
Culture, Violence and the Caribbean Present
Wrestling with the Angels, Devils and Empires
Nationalism and Rethinking the Caribbean
Representation, the Media and Popular Culture
Culture, Material Culture and the Cultural Turn
State/(s) of Cultural Studies
Collaborative and Collective Research Methodologies
Law, Order and Policing the Present
Arts Policy and Cultural Industries
Race, Caribbean Identity and Globalisation
Memory, Memoralising, and Remembering in the Caribbean
The Mobile Caribbean: Migrations, Nations, Diasporas
Rethinking Marxism, Political Action and the Left
We invite you to submit an abstract of no more than 250 words. The topic can fall within the broad remit of the focus areas above, or any other influenced by the work of
Stuart Hall.
KEY DATES
Deadline for Submissions – 1 February 2017
Decision – 28 February 2017
Full Script – 1 April 2017
Conference – 1-3 June 2017
