On February 21-22, historians Carla Gardina Pestana (UCLA) and Gabriel de Avilez Rocha (Brown) curated a lively second conference on the Early Global Caribbean. Historians, literary scholars, and archaeologists convened at the Clark Library to discuss the theme of “Convictions.” Both early career and established scholars delivered ingenious papers on the Caribbean before the sugar regime, relating to indigenous knowledge, forced migrations, disease, the environment, ethnic/racial experiences, labor, religious communities, and religious thought, with many of these themes overlapping. Most importantly, the scholars highlighted new ways to (re)think and (re)center the Caribbean, be it thematically, methodologically, or with respect to sources. Understandings went beyond conventional (non-specialist) Caribbean conceptions in nuanced ways. A prevailing theme in the collaborative Q&A discussions was epistemology as it arises in the sources, directly engaging with the aforementioned themes and striking at the heart of academic work. Timely discussions of state policies, epidemics, ecology, race/ethnicity, freedom, and indigeneity abounded in the presentations and discussions.
-Hugo Daniel Peralta-Ramírez, Ph.D. Student, Department of History