Aaron Kamugisha: The Promise of Caribbean Intellectual History

Abstract:

Kamugisha will discuss his essay, which provides a meditation on the field of Caribbean intellectual history, outlining the contours of the field through a consideration of eight relatively discrete though overlapping categories. It argues that the study of Caribbean intellectual history gives us more conscious control over the articulation and reproduction of critical ideas about the region over time and space, alerts us to transformations in the conditions of Caribbean intellectual production, and reminds us of the existential crises the region faces in the third decade of the twenty-first century.

Short Bio:

Aaron Kamugisha is the Ruth Simmons Professor of Africana Studies at Smith College. He is the editor of eight books and seven special issues of journals on Caribbean and Africana thought, and author of Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition (Indiana University Press, 2019). His most recent co-edited collection, The Caribbean Race Reader, will be published by Polity Press in September 2024. He is currently a member of the editorial advisory board for the journals Social and Economic Studies and the Journal of West Indian Literature, and a member of the editorial collective of the journal Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.