Events

The Jamaican 1970s: A Symposium

General Programming

September 28–29, 2017 The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University
Organizer
  • David Scott
Notes
  • Free and open to the public
  • No registration necessary
  • First come, first seated

Programme:

Thursday, 28 September:
The Skylight Room, Graduate Center, CUNY

1:00-1:30pm: Opening remarks: Don Robotham
1:30-2:15pm: Opening remarks: Donette Francis

2:30-4:30pm: The Popular
Rachel Mordecai, On Reading Jamaica Inc., Seriously: Sensational(ist) Seventies Literature
Eddie Chambers, Jamaica’s influence on the making of Black Britain

5:00-6:00pm: Monuments
Petrina Dacres, Sculpture, Architectural Modernism and Memory in 1970s Jamaica

6:00pm: CUNY reception

Friday, 29 September:
The Heyman Center, Columbia University

10:00-12:00pm: Sustaining Social Movements
Kimberly Robinson-Walcott, “Black Man Time Now!” Race, Class, and Culture in 1970s Jamaica
Rupert Lewis, The Jamaican Left: Dogmas, Theories, and Politics, 1974-1980

1:30-3:30pm: Autobiographical Reflections
Honor Ford Smith, Performance, Decolonization and Life Stories: Sistren Theatre Collective and the Search for Radical Alternatives in the Present
Brian Meeks, Reading the Seventies in a Different Stylie: Dub Poetry and the Urgency of Message

4:00-6:00pm: General Conversation
Don Robotham and David Scott

Saturday, 30 September:
Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
9:30-12:00pm: Project Discussion (by invitation only)

Participants
  • Speaker Eddie Chambers Professor, Art History: African Diaspora Art University of Texas at Austin
  • Speaker Petrina Dacres Head of the Art History Department Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performance Art, Kingston
  • Speaker Honor Ford-Smith Associate Professor in the Community Arts Practice York University
  • Speaker Rupert Lewis Professor in Political Thought The University of the West Indies, Mona
  • Speaker Brian Meeks Professor of Africana Studies, Chair of Africana Studies Brown University
  • Speaker Rachel L. Mordecai Associate Professor of English University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Speaker Kimberly Robinson-Walcott Editor of Caribbean Quarterly University of the West Indies, Mona
  • Speaker Donald Robotham Professor of Anthropology City University of New York, Graduate Center
  • Convener David Scott Professor of Anthropology Columbia University
  • Convener Donette Francis Associate Professor and Director of American Studies University of Miami
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