ACH 2025 Preliminary Conference Program
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Multilingual Connections and Under-Represented Geographies:
56th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH)
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, June 1-5, 2025
University of the West Indies, St Augustine (Sunday only)
& Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (all other days)
Sunday, June 1
2:00-4:00pm Registration (St. Augustine Campus)
4:00-5:30pm Panel 1 (Local Organizing Committee Panel)
5:30-7:00pm Opening Ceremony and Welcome Reception
Monday, June 2 (Central Bank of Trinidad & Tobago)
9:00-10:30am Panel 2: Colonial Politics of Health and Disease in the Anglophone Caribbean
Chair: Juanita de Barros (McMaster University)
Samantha Hosein (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine): “Behind Closed Doors: Unveiling the Realities of Asylum Nursing at the St Ann’s Mental Hospital in Colonial Trinidad”
Brittany Merritt Nash (The College of St. Benedict & St. John’s University): “Cholera and the Meanings of Freedom in Barbados”
Debbie McCollin (The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine): “Colonial Testing Grounds: The Tobago Malaria Eradication Trial 1948-1952”
Elizabeth S. Manley (Xavier University): “A ‘Rich, Unexplored Field’: Women, Social Science, and the History of Caribbean Studies”
10:30-10:45am Coffee Break
11:00am-12:30pm Panel 3: Commerce and Illegal Trades in Colonial Time
Chair: Diana Paton (University of Edinburgh)
Marcus P. Nevius (University of Missouri): “An Historiographic Paradox: Maroon Power and Political Economy in Eighteenth Century Jamaica”
Florian Wieser (University of Edinburgh): “Truchements of the Caribbean: Language and Strategies of Negotiation in the First French-Caribbean Trade System, 1564–1625”
Melissa Morris (University of Wyoming): “Illegal Trade and Illicit Connections on Hispaniola, 1580-1620”
Alison Clark (University of Edinburgh): “An Axis of Capitalism between Scotland and Guyana: The Cotton Frontier in the Southeast Caribbean and the Rise of Sandbach Tinné & Co. 1790–1838”
Nathalie Frédéric Pierre (Howard University): “Second Slavery in Revolutionary Haiti: Trafficked Children and the Invisible Trade”
12:15-1:45pm Lunch
1:45-3:15pm Panel 4: The Mapping and Remodeling of their Worlds
Chair: TBD
Armando García de la Torre (independent scholar): “The Painful Remodelling of Trinidad: The Case of Dominque Dert, 1781”
Michael Becker (University of Maryland): “Bayly v. Ewart: Refashioning the Slave Registry Bill in the Apprenticeship Era British Empire”
Joseph Biggerstaff (Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies): “Beyond Words: A Deep History of the Caribbean Gully”
Marley Lix-Jones (Harvard University): “‘Our People’: Mapping the Social Worlds of Enslaved People on the East Coast of Demerara”
Meha Priyadarshini (University of Edinburgh) and Victoria de Lorenzo (The University of Edinburgh): “Connecting Threads: Reorienting Global Fashion Histories through the Madras Kerchief”
3:15-3:30pm Coffee Break
3:30pm-5:00pm Panel 5: Negotiation(s) and Freedom(s) in the Early-Modern Caribbean
Chair: Carla Pestana (University of California Los Angeles)
Sophia Monegro (The University of Texas at Austin): “Las Ganadoras: Black Women Enterprising Freedom in Colonial Santo Domingo (1542-1570s)”
Clifton E. Sorrell III (The University of Texas at Austin): “‘Los Palenques’: Inter-Imperial Warfare and Negotiating Black Self-Rule in the Early Caribbean 1655-1660”
Kyle Prochnow (Ursinus College): “Daaga: Yoruba Warfare and a British Army ‘Mutiny’ in Trinidad”
Katharine Gerbner (University of Minnesota): “Adga Tome: Damma’s World, From Gbe to Dutch Creole”
Tuesday, June 3
9:00-10:30am Panel 6: In Perpetual Motion: Colonial Afro- and Anglo-Caribbean Circulations
Across the Seas
Chair: TBD
Natalie Zacek (University of Manchester): “Empire of the Senses: The Creole Sensorium in Georgian London”
Christine Walker (The University of Hong Kong): “‘To Suckle My Daughter Betsy’: The Regional Trafficking of Enslaved Servants Between Antigua and North America”
Gunvor Simonsen (University of Copenhagen): “Free Soil and Restitution of Fugitives in the Nineteenth-Century Lesser Antilles”
Rasmus Christensen (University of Copenhagen): “Small Islands and Scarcity in the Leeward Islands and Virgin Islands, late 17th to 18th centuries”
Tyesha Maddox (Fordham University): “Sons and Daughters of Ethiopia: West Indian Immigrant Mutual Aid Societies and the Impact of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War”
10:30-10:45am Coffee Break
11:00am-12:30pm Panel 7: Shaping a Plural Colony during Revolutionary Times: Trinidad at the Turn of the 19th Century
Chair: Bridget Brereton (UWI St. Augustine)
Cristina Soriano (University of Texas): “Kings, Queens, Dances and Feasts: Insurrection and Multiculturalism in Trinidad’s Black Communities, 1805”
Tessa Murphy (Syracuse University): “Slavery on the Frontier: Enslaved Creoles and Intra-American Trafficking to Nineteenth Century Trinidad”
Dexnell Peters (University of the West Indies, Mona): “Francisco de Miranda’s Trinidad as a Revolutionary Atlantic World Listening Post”
Catherine Peters (College of William and Mary): “Fishing, Fraternity, and Fugitivity: Asian Men in Early-Nineteenth Century Trinidad”
Patrick Murphy (University of Chicago): “Space, Place, and Empire in Trinidad’s Nineteenth-Century Popular Riots”
12:15-1:45pm Lunch
1:45-3:15pm Panel 8: Bringing Caribbean Women out of the Shadows
Chair: Clara Palmiste (University of the French Antilles)
Owen MacDonald (University of Illinois): “Building Community and Empire: Afro-Antillian Women’s Labor in Early Porto Velho”
Daniel Livesay (Claremont McKenna College): “Plantation Resistance by Elder Jamaican Women”
Shivalli Ragbir (The University of the West Indies, St Augustine): “Female Invisibility within the Justice System: Accommodation and Safety in Penal Facilities in Trinidad and Tobago 1842-1958”
Takkara Brunson (Texas A&M University): “Afro-Diasporic Womanhood and the Photographic Archive of Eusebia Cosme, 1920s-1950s”
Arti Padmani Ramsaroop (The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine): “For Home from Abroad: Muriel Petioni and the Trinidad and Tobago Gayap Organisation”
3:15-3:30pm Coffee Break
3:30-4:30pm Panel 9: Poster session
Chair: TBD
Gabriel José Rivera Cotto (Yale University): “Freedom at Bay: Enslaved Labor and Resistance in the Port of San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1800-1850”
Shantal Cover (The University of the West Indies): “Conceptualizing Cultural Heritage Discourse in 21st Century Jamaica”
Portia Hopkins (Rice University)/ Synatra Smith (The Association of African American Museums): “Bahamians of South Florida: A Visual history”
6:00pm Book launch and reception (Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago)
Wednesday, June 4
9:00-10:30am Panel 10: The Legacies of British Colonialism
Chair: Leslie James (Queen Mary University of London)
Olivia Wyatt (Queen Mary University of London): “Caribbean Migrants and the Negotiation of Colonial Pigmentocracy in Britain, 1948-78”
Deanna Lyncook (Queen Mary University of London): “Colonial Legacies within Education: the Migration of Caribbean Children to Post-War Britain”
Christopher Montague (Northwestern University): “Anticolonial Strategists: Norman Manley and Noel Nethersole as Neither Sell-Outs nor Heroes”
Terencia Kyneata Joseph (University of the Southern Caribbean): “A Campaign to Eliminate a ‘Vulgar and Corrupt Dialect’: Kwéyòl in St. Lucia, 1880-1920″
Jan Bant (Radboud University & University of Curaçao): “Sport in Small Spaces: Baseball and the Negotiation of Postcolonial Belonging in the Dutch Caribbean Diaspora”
10:30-10:45am Coffee Break
10:45am-12:15pm Panel 11: Immigration and Caribbean Diasporas in the Amazon and Circum-Caribbean
Chair: Tanalís Padilla (MIT)
Elaine Pereira Rocha (UWI-Cave Hill): “Paths on the Margins of History: Caribbean Immigrants in Early 20th Century Amazon”
Santiago Silva de Andrade (Universidade Federal de Rondônia): “Crime, Justice and Culture: Afro-Caribbean Workers in Amazon (1912-1930)”
Martha Arguello (Pomona College Academy for Youth Success): “Painting Nicaragua: A Dialogue Between History and the Visual Arts of the Atlantic Coast and Solentiname”
Jeanette Charles-Marquez (University of California): “Crossing Waters: Afro-Atlantic Historical Convergences from Venezuela, Trinidad, and Nigeria”
Cindy Forster (Scripps College): “Afro-Venezuelan Socialism through a Particular History of Fisherfolk: Chuao, where the women sing to their cacao, and a policewoman and schoolteacher forced U.S. and Colombian mercenaries to surrender, face-down, on the sandy pier”
1:30pm Optional Field Trip: Angostura Ltd.
In the tradition of the Association of Caribbean Historians Conference, Wednesday afternoon is left unscheduled to allow participants the opportunity to explore the historic sites and cultural opportunities of Trinidad.
Thursday, June 5
9:00-10:30am Panel 12: Trans-Caribbean Connections Across Time & Space: Black Activism in the Nation-State and Anticolonial Geographies (1834-2010)
Chair: Laura Rosanne Adderley (Tulane University)
Chelsey R. Smith (University of Illinois): “Formal and Informal Teaching and Learning in Post-Abolition Afro-Jamaican Communities”
Eloy Romero Blanco (University of Pittsburgh): “From U.S. Expansionism to Cuban Independence: The Cuban Trans-Caribbean Network in the Aftermath of the López Expeditions”
Kiana Knight (Brown University): “Women in Racial Uplift: Bilingual Activism and Education in Panama’s Canal Zone, 1945-1960”
Manuel Osvaldo Robles (Hampden-Sydney College): “Padre Glyn Jemmott: The Father of the Afro-Mexican Movement, 1997-2010”
Llana Barber (University of Minnesota): “Decolonization and the Nativist State: A History of Haitians and anti-Haitianism in the Bahamas”
10:30-10:45am Coffee Break
10:45am-12:15pm Panel 13: Protest Movements in 20th Century Caribbean
Chair: TBD
Melanie R. Holmes (University of South Carolina): “Voice of the People: Barbados, Black Internationalism, and the Rebranding of Black Power”
Jeffrey R Kerr-Ritchie (Howard University): “The Diasporic Dimensions of British Caribbean Protest, 1918-1921”
Cristian Padilla Romero (Yale University): “Afro-Caribbean and Garífuna Garveyism in Caribbean Honduras 1920-1932”
Thomas van Gaalen (Radboud University): “Solidarity as Patronage: the Clandestine Radicalism of Curaçao’s Unión General de Trabajadores, 1929”
12:15-1:30pm Lunch
1:30-2:30pm Panel 14: Reshaping Communities, Reshaping Home and Faith
Chair: TBD
Joanne Collins-Gonsalves (Historical Research International Inc., Canada): “West Indian House and the Caribbean Community in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada”
Alejandro Manuel Gerena-Ortiz (New York University): “Boricua forty-eighter: Betances, French Republicanism and Puerto Rican Nationalism”
Aakeil Murray (UWI, St. Augustine): “Theorising Pentecostal Conversion amongst Hindu Families in Trinidad through the Lens of Luke 14:26”