This volume brings together scholars working in different languages-Creole, French, English, Spanish-and modes of cultural production-literature, art, film, music-to suggest how best to model courses that impart the rich, vibrant, and multivalent aspects of the Caribbean in the classroom. Essays focus on discussing how best to cross languages, histories, and modes of discourse. Instead of relying on available paradigms that depend on Western ways of thinking, the essays recommend methods to develop a pan-Caribbean perspective in relation to notions of the self, uses of language, gender hierarchies, and ideas of nationhood. Contributors represent various disciplines, work in one of the several languages of the Caribbean, and offer essays that reflect different cadres of expertise.

About the Author
Valerie K. Orlando is professor of French and Francophone literatures in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Maryland. Sandra Messinger Cypess is professor of Latin American literatures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland.

Reviews
Valerie Orlando and Sandra Cypess' Reimagining the Caribbean: Conversations among the Creole, English, French, and Spanish Caribbean will light up the horizons of students and teachers of Caribbean cultures. The volume offers a panorama that explores the specificities and inter-relatedness of cultural production (literature, film, art, music). Covering fields as diverse as poetics, translation, gender studies, culture theory, and national identities, the authors range beyond the traditional borders of monolingual, Balkanized Caribbean studies. The essays examine the Caribbean within its web of history, politics, economics, and theory as well as the area's globalized interrelations. -- Maria Acosta Cruz, author of Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence
For teachers and scholars of Caribbean literature and culture, Reimagining the Caribbean is necessary reading and an invaluable guide for navigating this complex terrain of study. Proposing that the Caribbean is best taught through close attention to its linguistic, cultural, and ethnic, not to mention geographical, diversity, this excellent set of essays also shows the importance of understanding the region as a whole. Most welcomed are the authors' explorations of practical approaches to analyzing the diverse unity of the Caribbean: hierarchies of language and the stakes of working with translations; the role of canon formation, colonial history, and the literary marketplace; and the importance of interdisciplinarity (film, theater, visual arts, literature) to the field. I applaud editors Cypess and Orlando for helping to define and reshape the field of Caribbean cultural studies and for giving us this rich and deeply needed pedagogical resource. -- Valerie Kaussen, University of Missouri-Columbia
[The essays] provide thought-provoking, plentiful models and suggestions for teachers and students of the Caribbean.The book offers a Caribbean trans-lingual panorama that explores specific national cultures as well as encompassing the area's inter-relatedness. . . .[the authors] provide an extensive sampling of primary and secondary works from the entire area, going beyond the traditional borders of monolingual countries and their national production. . . .Even more valuable are the models of interdisciplinary approaches that the essays offer for teaching the area's complex web of politics, race, class, gender and national identities. * Anthurium *



Book Information
ISBN 9780739194218
Author Valerie K. Orlando
Format Paperback
Page Count 212
Imprint Lexington Books
Publisher Lexington Books
Weight(grams) 322g
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 155mm * 16mm