ACH 2023 Preliminary Conference Program

The Global Caribbean:
54th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH)

San Juan/Carolina, Puerto Rico,
June 11-15, 2023

Archivo General de Puerto Rico (June 11)
Biblioteca y Centro de Investigación Social Jesús T. Piñero, Universidad Ana G. Méndez en Carolina (June 12-15)

Sunday, June 11

3:00-5:00pm     Registration (Archivo General de Puerto Rico)
5:00-6:30pm     Panel 1 (Local Organizing Committee Panel 1)
6:30-8:00pm     Opening Ceremony and Welcome Reception

Monday, June 12

9:00-10:30am     Panel 2: Caribbean Pioneers

Chair: Rebecca Anne Goetz (NYU)

Andrew Manginn (Sewanee): “Louise Louverture: L’Ange du Malheu”

Pedro L. Ramos (Ana G. Mendez University): “Democracy, Equality and Doctors: Cuban Diplomacy after 1971″

Arti Padmani Ramsaroop (UWI St Augustine): “For the People or For Personal Uplift?  African Caribbean Fraternal and Benevolent Associations: Caribbean and Harlem Realities, 1900-1964”

10:30-10:45am     Coffee Break
10:45am-12:15pm     Panel 3: Disaster Capitalism

Chair: Carla Pestana (UCLA)

Christopher Montague (Northwestern University): “Self-Government and White Sovereignty: The Black Marxist Critique of Colonialism in Jamaica”

Mary Draper (Midwestern State University): “Underwater Land and the 1692 Port Royal Earthquake”

12:15-1:30pm     Lunch
1:30-3:00pm     Panel 4: Regional Histories of Health, Wellness, and Nutrition

Chair: Kathleen Monteith (UWI Mona)

Nicholas Crawford (Sam Houston State University): “Factories and Gardens: Enslaved Food Cultivation and the Alimentary Economy of Sugar in the British Caribbean”

Daniel Livesay (Claremont McKenna College): “The Declining Health of Enslaved Elders: Mounting Pressures Against the Aged in Nineteenth-Century Jamaica”

Sylvia Marie Casillas-Olivieri (Ana G. Méndez University): “La ciencia contra la superstición: los Libros para el Pueblo y las películas de la División de Educación de la Comunidad”

M.E. Sotomayor (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): “Reproductive Rights in Puerto Rico: Sterilization, Contraception, and Reproductive Violence”

Tuesday, June 13

9:00-10:30am     Panel 5: Negotiating the Caribbean: Historicizing a Changing World  

Chair: Bridget Brereton (UWI St Augustine) (TBC)

Michelle McDonald (Stockton University): “The Globalization of Caribbean Studies: How the ACH Reflects and Shapes the Field”

Edward Paulino (CUNY) and Jorge Colon Delgado (John Jay College): “La Ruta del Béisbol: the Case for a Caribbean Field of Dreams UNESCO Heritage Trail”

Aura S. Jirau Arroyo (Eastern Illinois University): “‘Como las del norte’: Shifting Conceptions of Higher Education in Puerto Rico During the 1970s”

Piero Visconte (University of Texas): “Loíza Spanish and the Afro-Puerto Rican Identity: Language, Maroonage, and Blackness”

10:30-10:45am     Coffee Break
10:45am-12:15pm     Panel 6: Supplying the Enemy: Empire and Spain’s asiento de negros, 1596-1750

Chair: Wim Klooster, Clark University

Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues (FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa): “The Portuguese Administration of the Asiento and the Conquest of Angola (1595-1641)”

Ramona Negrón (Leiden University): “The Dutch West India Company (WIC) and the Spanish Asiento de Negros, 1660s-1680s”

Philippe Hrodej (l’Université de Bretagne-Sud): “The Establishment of the French Asiento: the Action of Jean Du Casse (1697-1712)”

Camilla de Koning (Manchester University): “Disturbing Spanish Monopoly Trade: Britain’s Conquest Through the Asiento de Negros”

12:15-1:30pm     Lunch
1:30-3:00pm     Panel 7: The Global Caribbean Across Centuries

Chair: Fiona Rajkumar (University of the Southern Caribbean)

Tiffany Momon (Sewanee): “‘Free Born in Virginia’: The Geography of Black Craft and Trade Labor in Jamaica”

Maël Lavenaire (London School of Economics and Political Science): “The Aftermaths of the World War II and the Social Transformation in the French Antilles (1944-1963)”

Anne’el E. Bain (UWI St Augustine): “‘Hot War’ In The Caribbean Basin: How Leftist Solidarity In The Caribbean Region Interacted With The Global Cold War”

Arlene J. Díaz (Indiana University): “The US Spy and the Cuban Insurgent General, 1895-1898″

3:00-3:15pm     Coffee Break
3:15-4:45pm     Panel 8 (Local Organizing Committee Panel 2)

Wednesday, June 14

9:00-10:30am     Panel 9: Moving Forward: Analyses of Modernization and Reparatory Justice

Chair: Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt University)

Audra A. Diptée (Carleton University): “Operation Legacy in the Caribbean”

Isar Godreau (Universidad de Puerto Rico en Cayey): “Justicia Reparativa y Educación Afro-digna: La esclavitud en los libros de texto escolares”

Marcos A. Vélez Rivera (Ana G Méndez University): The construction of a popular library in the modernization of Puerto Rico: cultural observations and international considerations

Rafael V. Capó García (University of British Columbia): “Eurocentric Portrayals of Conquest, Colonization, and Indigeneity: An analysis of Social Studies textbooks in Puerto Rico”

10:30-10:45am     Coffee Break
10:45am-12:15pm     Panel 10: Rethinking the Coloniality of the Past

Chair: Roderick McDonald (Rider University)

Philippe Girard (McNeese State University): “Le marronage à Saint-Domingue (Haïti) et la révolte de 1791″

Laura Rosanne Adderley (Tulane University): “Black Caribbean Humanity in the Fraught Archives of British Slave Trade Abolition: Finding African Kinship and Social Ties in Vice-Admiralty Courts and Customs Houses of the Early 1800s Caribbean”

Gad Heuman (University of Warwick): “The Apprenticeship System in the Caribbean: The World of the Apprentices”

Bronwyn Lee (Binghamton University): “Aluminum and Autonomy: Remaking Racial and Ethnic Identities in Industrializing Suriname, 1950s-1960s”

12:15-1:30pm     Lunch
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 Puerto Rico.
1:45pm     Optional Field Trip

Thursday, June 15

9:00-10:45am     Panel 11: Testing the Limits of Race and Gender

Chair: Ernesto Bassi (Cornell University)

Antonio Gaztambide-Géigel (Universidad de Puerto Rico): “Martí, Nuestra América y la América Latina”

Anne Ulentin (University of The Bahamas): “Interpersonal Violence in the late 19th-/early 20th-century Bahamas”

Debbie McCollin (UWI St Augustine): “Bridging the Gap: The Child Welfare League of Trinidad and Tobago 1918-1970”

José Orlando Sued (Ana G. Méndez University): “Cuando gobernar es despoblar: filmes comisionados por el Gobierno de Puerto Rico para promover la migración y el control de natalidad durante las décadas del 1950 al 1960”

10:45am-12:15pm     Annual General Meeting
12:15-1:30pm     Lunch
6:00-11:00pm     Dinner & Fête

Friday, June 16

Optional Field Trips