Suffering Bodies, Dance and Transcendence in Caribbean Literature, Jacqueline Couti (University of Kentucky)

In Gisèle Pineau's Macadam Dreams, through the shifting metaphors of the drum and the cyclone, which signify not only sexual crime but also purification and healing, the instable identity of Creole subjectivity emerges. Many characters are in pain. Yet, in the mighty drumbeat of the tambour-ka lurks a power that can make an old and broken woman dance as if her life depended on it. This presentation examines the motif of the dancing body and explores dance as a contemporary site of resistance and healing in traditional and contemporary genres such gwo-ka. Such an approach intends to constitute an archeology of representations of dance and dancers as the expression of creolization and awareness of self in in French and Francophone Caribbean Studies.





Liminality of the Dancing Suffering Body, Gladys M. Francis (Georgia State University)

Liminality of the Dancing Suffering Body is an analysis of painful lived experiences expressed through Caribbean traditional dance performances that present cultural, political and memorial strategies, in addition to interpersonal relations. This presentation focuses on the works of contemporary Black Diasporic filmmakers who challenge traditional gendered spaces and politics while contextualizing the body's states of loss, its displacements, methods of transmission and resistance through innovative representations of the dancing body in pain. "Liminality of the Dancing Suffering Body" introduces the gwo-ka and bigidi dance aesthetic, both explored as a counter-point of history and a Maroon space of (modern) history. It is through the dancing body that I will expose transgressional identities shaping cartographies of pain that distort the perceptions of cultural formations, Creolization and globalization, and problematize notions of self-dependence, self-organization, choice, autonomy, and agency through class, gender, race, and locality.

Laura Dudley Jenkins is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati.  Her research and publications focus on social justice policies in the context of culturally diverse democracies, especially India. She was a Fulbright New Century Scholar in South Africa and India and co-edited with Michele S. Moses the forthcoming book Affirmative Action Matters: Creating Opportunities for Students Around the World (Routledge 2014). 

In her articles, she analyzes religious freedom and conversion, competing minorities’ claims for affirmative action, colonial and contemporary government anthropology, the role of social science in anti-discrimination law, and reserved legislative seats for women. Her book chapters include her research on religious family law systems, mass religious conversion as a route to social mobility, and comparative affirmative action. In addition to two Fulbrights, she has received fellowships from the Dartmouth Humanities Center and the United States Institute of Peace. For more information see www.Lauradudleyjenkins.com

Dr. Shlossberg’s work documents contemporary danzas, such as the pastorelas, and related masking customs in central Michoacan. His work also examines how knowledge about masks and masking is often falsified in popular and scholarly work through the repetition of colorful myths that envelop the craft and the disavowal of items produced for the tourist and curio markets as inauthentic and low-grade. Debates over the authenticity of tourist and curio arts shed light on how popular and elite, indigenous, mestizo, and Anglo actors in central Michoacan construct and contest relations of class, race, and inequality as they negotiate the meanings of “tradition,” “ethnic authenticity,” “globalization,” and “cultural change.”

El trabajo del Dr. Scholossberg se enfoca en documentar danzas, pastorales y mascaradas el territorio de Michoacán. Su trabajo busca traer cociencia al público sobre cómo las máscaras y bailes han sido glorificados y falsificados a través de mitos coloríficos que buscan atraer atención turística. Como consecuencia, varias máscaras a la venta suelen ser falsas y no piezas de arte. Varios debates han surgido sobre las diferentes perspectivas tomadas entre las imitiaciones y el verdadero arte curio. Schlossberg busca enseñar como la élite social, los indígenas, mestizos y los Anglo actores de Michoacán construyen, mantienen y negocian relaciones de clase social, raza e inequalidad a través de la tradición, auntenticidad étnica, globalización y cambios culturales en el arte.