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Instructor: Lauren MacDonald
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 9:00-11:30 am (or by appointment)
Gilman 346
AS.100.251
From Columbus to Calypso:
The Caribbean and the Wider World
Fall 2016
Tuesdays, Thursdays: 9:00-10:15 am
Gilman 377
"If someone needed a visual explanation, a graphic picture of what the Caribbean is, I would
refer him to the spiral chaos of the Milky Way, the unpredictable flux of transformative plasma
that spins calmly in our globe's firmament, that sketches in an 'other' shape that keeps changing,
with some objects born to light while others disappear into the womb of darkness: change,
transit, return, fluxes of sidereal matter."
-Antonio Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern
Perspective, 2nd ed., trans. James E. Maraniss (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 4.
Course Description: This seminar considers the history of the Caribbean and how that history
was made, beginning with the pre-Columbian residents of the islands and continuing until the
modern day. In our quest to understand the myriad islands and peoples of the Caribbean, we will
read a variety of first-hand accounts, including memoirs, correspondence, and other primary
sources. In addition, we will look at how Caribbean history is remembered and interpreted in
novels, movies, music, and other elements of popular culture from the region. Our goal as a class
is three-fold: to examine some of the major historical events that have shaped the modern
Caribbean, to understand the different ways in which that history has been told and re-told by
different people in the past, and to understand the Caribbean in relation to the wider world.
Texts for Purchase:
Bartolomé de las Casas, An account, much abbreviated, of the destruction of the Indies,
with related texts. Ed. Franklin W. Knight. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing,
2003.
Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New
York: Penguin Books, 1985.
Alexander O Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America. Mineola: Dover Publications,
2000.
Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean 1789-1804: A
Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World. New York: Noonday Press, 1989.
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.
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Course Readings: All chapters and articles will be made available online through Blackboard,
and complete books will be available on 2-hour reserve at MSEL.
Course Requirements: In this course, you will be graded on five things:
Participation: 20%
CARICOM Annotated Bibliography: 25%
CARICOM Presentations: 15%
Short Colonial Essay: 15%
Long Essay: 25%
Participation: This seminar depends upon informed, courteous, and lively discussion, and to
that end, you should come to each class prepared to discuss the readings listed in the syllabus for
that date. Your contributions to our seminar should demonstrate that you have reflected on the
readings, how they relate to one another, and how they speak to the issues we’ve raised in prior
meetings. You should be prepared to defend your opinions while also respectfully considering
the points raised by your seminar colleagues. As you read the material assigned for every class
meeting and prepare for your contribution to our class discussions, some useful questions to keep
in mind: Who made this source? When was it made, and why? What was it trying to accomplish?
What kinds of evidence or arguments does it employ? What does it emphasize? What does it
neglect? How does it compare to other readings in the same week, or in past weeks? Does it
seem reliable and authoritative? (NOTE: If the instructor suspects a trend of inadequate student
preparation for the class discussion, the instructor reserves the right to introduce surprise pop
quizzes as part of the Participation grade.)
CARICOM Presentations: All semester long, we will be convening a mock-summit for the
Caribbean Community (i.e. CARICOM). In the second week of class, you will chose a unique
territory (from the 28 CARICOM members, associates, and observers) and a presentation date
during the semester. Beginning in Week 3, each Thursday will feature short student presentations
(10-15 minutes long) on the selected country or territory regarding how its history is remembered
and retold in later popular culture. We will discuss specific methods of researching and preparing
your presentation in class early in the semester.
CARICOM Annotated Bibliography: The other component of your CARICOM claim will be
the semester-long construction of an annotated bibliography concerning your chosen country’s
history and culture. An annotated bibliography is a compilation of source citations and short
summaries that describe and evaluate the source; we’ll be building our annotated bibliographies
on Blackboard, one week at a time. Each week (from Weeks 3 through 13), you will post the
citation of a source – such as a scholarly article, a newspaper article, an encyclopedia entry, or a
work of art – that pertains to your CARICOM country, as well as a short (at least 200-word)
paragraph that briefly summarizes and analyzes the source. We will discuss specific
requirements of the annotated bibliography early in the semester.
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Short Colonial Essay: In week 6, you will submit a short paper, 4 to 5 pages in length,
responding to an essay prompt to be circulated by the instructor. Drawing upon our seminar
discussions, the prompt will ask you to analyze and explain a particular element of colonial
Caribbean history, and you will be expected to cite evidence from multiple class readings in
support of your argument. The short colonial essay will be due Friday, October 7th.
Long Essay: At the end of the course, you will submit a 10- to 15-page essay on the topic of
your choice, based on outside sources that will investigate, analyze, and explain some aspect of
Caribbean history. In this essay, you will demonstrate your mastery of some of the themes that
we have spent the semester discussing, such as the reliability of historical documents, the
crafting of historical narratives for a latter-day audience, the ways in which history-makers
forget, erase, and recreate the past, and the relationship between art and historical memory. You
are required to consult with the instructor about your intended topic by week 10. The long essay
will be due Friday, December 16th.
Late Assignments: Late assignments will penalized by 10% of the total possible points per day.
(Thus, a 100-point perfect paper will get 90 points if submitted a day late, 80 points if submitted
two days late…)
Attendance: The quality of this seminar depends on regular attendance by all its participants.
Every time you miss a class, you miss an opportunity to contribute to our discussion. Thus if you
have more than two unexcused absence, the instructor will begin deducting points from your
Participation grade for each additional unexcused absence. If you will be missing class for
extracurricular activities or religious observances, please let the instructor know in advance; if
you have a medical or personal emergency, please let the instructor know as soon as possible.
Accessibility: If you are a student with a disability or believe you might have a disability that
requires accommodations, please contact Student Disability Services at 410-516-4720,
[email protected], or in-person at 385 Garland Hall. Any student who may need
accommodations should notify the instructor.
General Notes: There will be no extra credit offered in this course. Any alterations to this
syllabus will be announced to the class participants well in advance of any deadlines. Some of
the material covered in this course may contain graphic violence and offensive language; the
instructor will do her best to give advance warning for content that is potentially disturbing, but
any students with specific concerns should also feel free to discuss those concerns privately with
the instructor.
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Week 1: Defining the Caribbean and Sources of History
Discussion Questions: What is the Caribbean? How do we define the region? How do we
remember its history? What sources can we use to understand its past?
Thursday, 9/01: Introduction
Week 2: Columbus and Early Spanish Colonization
Discussion Questions: What do we know about the indigenous Caribbean before Columbus?
What sources can we use to understand that history? What sort of information might go
unmentioned or under-emphasized in European-written sources? How can we read ‘against the
grain’? What are other sources of information about the sixteenth-century Caribbean?
Tuesday, 9/6: The Indigenous Caribbean
(Students will sign up for CARICOM countries)
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. An account, much abbreviated, of the destruction of the
Indies, with related texts. Ed. Franklin W. Knight. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 2003. Pgs. 1-88.
Thursday, 9/8: Forms of Conquest
Deagan, Kathleen. “Reconsidering Taino Social Dynamics after Spanish
Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture Contact Studies.” American
Antiquity 69:4 (Oct. 2004). Pgs. 597-626.
Week 3: Africa and the Early Modern Caribbean
Discussion Questions: What are the origins of the transatlantic slave trade? What sources do we
use to understand slavery? What kinds of sources might tell us about African experiences of
slavery and the transatlantic slave trade? Which aspects of culture might survive the Middle
Passage? Which might not?
Tuesday, 9/13: The Origins of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
(Prompts for Short Essay Circulated)
Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 14001800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Chapter 4, pgs. 98126.
Hawkins, John. “The Third Voyage of M. John Hawkins, 1567-1568.”
Early English and French Voyages, Chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534-1608. Ed.
Henry S. Burrage. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906. Pgs 137-148.
Thursday, 9/15: African Survivals and Atlantic Creoles
Mintz, Sidney and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An
Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Pgs 7-22.
Lovejoy, Paul. “The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity,
Culture and Religion under Slavery,” Studies in the World History of
Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation 2:1 (1997), 1-21.
Week 4: Sugar and Plantation Slavery
Discussion Questions: What are the defining characteristics of a sugar plantation in the colonial
Caribbean? How did the cultivation of sugar differ from other types of plantation crops, such as
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harvesting coffee? What were the larger political and social consequences of enslaved labor and
its specific practices?
Tuesday, 9/20: Sweetness, Power, and the Infernal Sugar Mill
Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
New York: Penguin Books, 1985. Pgs. 19-73.
Thursday, 9/22: Forms of Labor
Morgan, Jennifer. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World
Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Pgs. 144165.
Week 5: Slave Resistance, Maroon Communities, and Piracy
Discussion Questions: How might an enslaved person resist his or her enslavement? What are
possible forms of rebellion? What are the consequences of rebellion? How did slave societies
deal with maroon communities of ex-slaves in the Caribbean? How did imperial authorities deal
with piracy? What can rebellious slaves or pirates tell us about power and authority in the
Caribbean in the early modern era?
Tuesday, 9/27: Resistance, Armed and Otherwise
Patterson, Orlando. “Slavery and Slave Revolts: A Sociohistorical Analysis of the
First Maroon War, 1665-1740.” In Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave
Communities in the Americas. Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973. Pgs. 246291.
Brown, Vincent. The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic
Slavery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Pgs. 129-156.
Thursday, 9/29: Pirates, Buccaneers, and Inter-imperial Rivalries
Exquemelin, Alexander O. The Buccaneers of America. Mineola: Dover
Publications, 2000. Pgs 25-28; 119-209.
Week 6: Depictions of Slavery: The Last Supper
Discussion Questions: How does the depiction of slavery on a Cuban sugar plantation in the
1976 film La última cena accord with our earlier discussions of Caribbean slavery? What
surprised you? Why do you think director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea chose to tell this story in this
way?
Tuesday, 10/04: The Last Supper, Part I
In-class: dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, La última cena (1976) [first half]
Thursday, 10/6: The Last Supper, Part II
In-class: dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, La última cena (1976) [second half]
(Short Essay due via Blackboard before midnight on Friday, October 7th)
Week 7: The Haitian Revolution
Discussion Questions: What specific circumstances in France and Haiti give rise to the Haitian
Revolution? Who in colonial Saint Domingue is initially involved? Why do enslaved men and
women join the conflict? How much does the French Revolution shape the Haitian Revolution?
How is the revolution remembered? Who writes the history of a revolution? Is Alejo Carpentier’s
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The Kingdom of This World an effective representation of history? What does he emphasize?
What does he neglect?
Tuesday, 10/11: The Age of Revolutions
Knight, Franklin W. “The Haitian Revolution.” The American Historical Review
105:1 (2000): 103-11.
Dubois, Laurent and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 17891804: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Pgs. 86-132; 175-196.
Thursday, 10/13: The Memory of Revolutions
Carpentier, Alejo. The Kingdom of This World. New York: Noonday Press, 1989.
Week 8: Abolition and Emancipation
Discussion Questions: After the Haitian Revolution, how long does slavery continue in the rest of
the Caribbean? What strategies do abolitionists employ? What are the consequences of
emancipation for the British Caribbean? What happens to ex-slaves after the end of slavery?
Tuesday, 10/18: Abolition Movements and Emancipation
Røge, Pernille. “Why the Danes Got There First – A Trans-Imperial Study of the
Abolition of the Danish Slave Trade in 1792,” Slavery & Abolition 35:4
(2014), 576-592.
Holt, Thomas C. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica
and Britain, 1832-1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Pgs. 55-79.
Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. “Wilberforce Spanished: Joseph Blanco White and
Spanish Antislavery, 1808-1814.” Slavery and Antislavery in Spain’s
Atlantic Empire. New York: Berghahn, 2013. Pgs. 158-175.
Thursday, 10/20: No Class [classes meet according to a Monday schedule]
Week 9: The Wars of Cuban Independence
Discussion Questions: What prompts the wars of Cuban independence from Spain? Why does
slavery persist so long in Cuba, as compared to the rest of the Americas? What are the potential
advantages and disadvantages for using oral history to understand the past? How does the
United States become involved in Cuban independence?
Tuesday, 10/25: Nineteenth-Century Cuba
Barnet, Miguel. Biography of a Runaway Slave. Translated by W. Nick Hill.
Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1994. Pgs. 23-57.
Thursday, 10/27: The Spanish-American War
Perez Jr., Louis A. “The Meaning of the Maine: Causation and the
Historiography of the Spanish-American War.” Pacific Historical Review
58:3 (1989): 293-322.
Week 10: The United States and the Caribbean
Discussion Questions: In which ways did the United States intervene with the Caribbean in the
early twentieth century? How did the United States justify those interventions?
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Tuesday, 11/01: Good Neighbors
Langley, Lester D. The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the
Caribbean, 1898-1934. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.
Pgs. 3-45.
Thursday, 11/03: Puerto Rico
Safa, Helen. “Women Workers and the Rise and Decline of Puerto Rico’s
Operation Bootstrap.” The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and
Industrialization in the Caribbean. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. Pgs.
59-97.
Week 11: Politics and Calypso in Trinidad and Tobago
Discussion Questions: What role does race and ethnicity play in Trinidadian politics and
society? How does calypso represent Trinidadian society and history?
Tuesday, 11/8: Decolonization and Politics
Yelvington, Kevin. “Introduction: Trinidad ethnicity.” Trinidad Ethnicity. Ed.
Kevin Yelvington. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Pgs.
1-32.
Mohammed, Patricia. “Structures of Experience: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in
the lives of two East Indian Women.” Trinidad Ethnicity. Ed.
Kevin Yelvington. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Pgs.
208-234.
Thursday, 11/10: Calypso and Carnival
Funk, Ray and Donald R. Hill. “Will Calypso Doom Rock ‘n’ Roll? The U.S.
Calypso Craze of 1957.” Trinidad Carnival: The Cultural Politics of a
Transnational Festival. Eds. Garth L. Green and Philip W. Scher.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 178-197.
Week 12: Jamaica and the Wider World
Discussion Questions: What is Jamaica’s relationship with the rest of the Caribbean? With the
wider world? How is Marcus Garvey remembered? What are the origins of Rastafari in
Jamaica? How does Theodoros Bafaloukos’ 1978 film Rockers depict Jamaican society?
Tuesday, 11/15: Marcus Garvey
Martin, Tony. "Marcus Garvey, the Caribbean, and the Struggle for Black
Jamaican Nationhood." In Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society
from Emancipation to the Present. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers. 359368.
Hahn, Steven. “Marcus Garvey, the UNIA, and the Hidden Political History of
African Americans.” The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pgs. 115-162.
Thursday, 11/17: Rastafari and Reggae
Chevannes, Barry. “The Enlightenment.” Rastafari: Roots and Ideology.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994. Pgs. 78-118.
dir. Theodoros Bafaloukos, Rockers (1978) [excerpt, to be watched in class]
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Week 13: The Cuban Revolution
Discussion Questions: What are the origins of the Cuban Revolution? If we want to understand
the revolution, what sources of information are the most reliable? Who can we count upon to tell
the ‘truth’ about the revolution? How have the histories of the revolution changed over time?
Tuesday, 11/29: The Cuban Revolution
Castro, Fidel. “History Will Absolve Me: Santiago de Cuba, October 16, 1953,”
Fidel Castro Reader. Ed. David Deutschmann and Deborah Shnookal.
North Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2008. Pgs. 45-106.
Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che.’ “Notes for the study of the ideology of the Cuban
Revolution (October 1960)” Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics
and Revolution. 2nd edition. Ed. David Deutschmann. Melbourne: Ocean
Press, 2003. Pgs. 121-129.
Thursday, 12/01: Histories of the Revolution
Miller, Nicola. “The Absolution of History: Uses of the Past in Castro’s Cuba,”
Journal of Contemporary History 38:1 (2003): 147-162.
Week 14: Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Discussion Questions: What can Haiti and the Dominican Republic teach us about the uses (and
abuses) of history? How can we use popular culture to understand history? How does Junot
Diaz approach the subject of history and the Dominican Republic in The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao? Is this a Caribbean novel?
Tuesday, 12/6: Violence and Politics
Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead
Books, 2007. Chapters 1-4.
Thursday, 12/8: The Legacies of History
Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead
Books, 2007. Chapters 5-8.
(Long Essay due via Blackboard before midnight on Friday, December 16th)