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There are the highest plateaus of Haiti, where a horse dies, lightning-struck by the age-old killer storm at Hinche. Next to it, his master contemplates the land he believed sound and expansive. He does not yet know that he is participating in the island\u2019s absence of equilibrium. But this sudden access to terrestrial madness illuminates his heart: he begins to think about the other Caribbean islands, their volcanoes their earthquakes, their hurricanes.
( Suzanne C\u00e9saire, \u201cThe Great Camouflage\u201d)<\/p>\n
We islanders aren\u2019t familiar with [the] vertigo of the earth. We bind vertigo to its greatest tension, we must contract our space in order to live there. Our field is of the sea that limits and opens. The island presumes other islands. Antilles. (\u00c9douard Glissant, Poetic Intention<\/em>)<\/p>\n Le pays d\u00e9pend souvent du coeur de l\u2019homme: il est miniscule si le coeur est petit, et immense si le coeur est grand. (Simone Schwarz- Bart, Pluie et vent sure T\u00e9lum\u00e9e Miracle) <\/em><\/p>\n The fluid, marine-like quality in much Caribbean writing, art, and thought\u2014the sea as history, the unity as submarine\u2014has to do with the complicated relationship with the land, especially for those whose ancestors were transported there to be either enslaved or indentured. One cannot understand the importance of the sea to Caribbean authors and artists without registering that of the land. As Helen Tiffin writes, the legacies of history are still relevant for people\u2019s notions of land and belonging: \u201cUnlike indigenous peoples, such relative \u2018newcomers\u2019 bring with them the values, cultural memories, knowledge, and traditions of their former environments, a prior \u2018natural\u2019 history of being-in-the-world that, consciously or unconsciously, implicitly or explicitly, influences (through expectation, comparison, and contrast) their perceptions of the new\u201d (2005, 199). It follows that the representation of the land and the landscape is not straightforward, \u201cimbricated as it is in crucial ways with histories of transplantation, slavery, and colonialism and with imported European traditions of land and landscape perception and representation\u201d (200).<\/p>\n Theorists of the Anthropocene have begun to address the contemporary ramifications of such a colonial relationship to the Caribbean land. Elizabeth DeLoughrey, for instance, writes of the Caribbean islands as \u201coriginary spaces of the Anthropocene,\u201d given the long history there of \u201ctransatlantic empire and slavery, the radical dislocation of humans from their ancestral soil, and a violent irruption of modernity that predates the industrialization of nineteenth-century Europe\u201d (2019, 35). Arguing that since capitalism was \u201cconstituted by transatlantic slavery and the plantation system,\u201d DeLoughrey points out that the term \u201cPlantationocene\u201d has recently been used \u201cto further specify the ways in which an economic and political system of empire is exacted on the earth\u201d (35). DeLoughrey\u2019s concerns are echoed in the work of Malcolm Ferdinand, who writes of the \u201cmodern tempest\u201d and the need to address the \u201cdouble fracture [that] separates the colonial history of the world from its environmental history\u201d (2022, 3). In Ferdinand\u2019s terms, as the \u201ceye of modernity’s hurricane, the Caribbean is that center where the sunny lull was wrongly confused for paradise, the fixed point of a global acceleration sucking up African villages, Amerindian societies, and European sails\u201d (2022, 12). For Val\u00e9rie Loichot, the sea is a site of \u201cunritual,\u201d which in the context of Caribbean history is \u201ca state more absolute than desecration or defilement\u201d in the memorialization of the unremembered dead of the Middle Passage. Unritual, she writes, \u201cis the obstruction of the sacred in the first place\u201d (2020,\u00a07). Drawing on Glissant, she argues that \u201cecological solidarity, the relational sacred, and artistic compositeness appear as the modes of healing and dealing with the unritual\u201d (2020,\u00a024). One vital way of understanding these processes and crises and the ongoing effects they have had on the imagination of Caribbean people, especially in regard to the land, the sea, and the environment, DeLoughrey insists (and Ferdinand and Loichot implicitly agree), is through a \u201ccritical engagement with narrative,\u201d and specifically, as she emphasizes in her recent work, the uses of allegory, which was \u201cintegral to representing the colonial violence of transatlantic empire and the plantation\u201d (35).<\/p>\n Taking up DeLoughrey\u2019s insistence on the importance of narrative, art, and new ways of thinking the Caribbean environment, this conference invites paper and panel proposals in English, French, or Spanish, on themes related to the ecologies of the circum-Caribbean region, an expansive space that includes the Lesser and Greater Antilles, the Caribbean coasts of South and Central America, the Guianas, and Florida and the U.S. Gulf South. The conference to be held at The University of the West Indies campus at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago in May 2026 will bring together scholars, practitioners, activists, scientists, artists, writers, and members of the public. Our aim is to imagine and conceive of Caribbean ideas, approaches, and solutions to the environmental issues that each space faces. We do so in a collective, Caribbean spirit, meeting in new regions of thought and creativity, as Glissant puts it, \u201cwhere the oceans join.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_divider color=”#c6c6d8″ divider_weight=”4px” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” width=”60%” module_alignment=”center” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_3,1_3,1_3″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|10%||10%|false|true” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”15px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Lands<\/p>\n Water<\/p>\n Travel<\/p>\n Tourism<\/p>\n Translocality<\/p>\n The senses<\/p>\n Soundscapes<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”15px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Caribbean environmentalisms<\/p>\n Caribbean indigenisms<\/p>\n Ecocriticisms<\/p>\n Dislocation<\/p>\n Disasters<\/p>\n Exiles<\/p>\n Memory<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”15px” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Futures<\/p>\n Languages<\/p>\n Visual art<\/p>\n Literature<\/p>\n Music<\/p>\n Gender<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”|10%||10%|false|true” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_divider color=”#c6c6d8″ divider_weight=”4px” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” width=”60%” module_alignment=”center” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Please submit your abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short bio of no more than 150 words.<\/p>\n We also welcome proposals for complete panels, which should consist of a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 presenters. If suggesting a panel, you will need to include abstracts for all papers and short biographies for each presenter. Each conference presentation should not exceed 15 minutes. You will receive an automated response when you submit and be notified of acceptance by mid-January 2026.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_button url_new_window=”on” button_text=”Submissions are Closed” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_button=”on” button_text_color=”#FFFFFF” button_bg_color=”#8d5638″ button_border_width=”0px” button_border_radius=”6px” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_button][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\nPossible themes include:<\/strong><\/h3>\n