ACH 2024 Conference Program
Migration and Space in Caribbean History:
55th Annual Conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH)
Santa Marta, Colombia, May 26-30, 2024
Universidad del Magdalena
Sunday, May 26
3:00-5:00pm Registration
5:00-6:30pm Panel 1 (Local Organizing Committee Panel): Mixed race, migrations, knowledge and education in Colombia
Chair: TBD
Caridad Brito Ballesteros (University of Magdalena): “Mixed race in the Colombian Caribbean in the 18th century”
Adriano Guerra (University of Magdalena): “Migrations and race policies in the Columbian Caribbean in the first half of the 20th century”
Edwin Corena Puentes (University of Magdalena): “Agricultural expansionism: circulation of actors and knowledge in Colombia (1960-1970)”
Elmis Ruíz Ospino: “Addressing racial discrimination in education : challenges and opportunities in the 21st century ”
6:30-8:00pm Opening Ceremony and Welcome Reception
Monday, May 27
9:15-10:45am Panel 2: Migration and Colonization: Unsettled Archives
Chair: Fredrik Thomasson (Uppsala University)
Rosemarijn Hoefte (KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Caribbean Studies): “Dutch research into the Colonial Past: A Tale of Two Cities”
Elise A. Mitchell (Princeton University): “Smallpox and Slavery in the Early Modern Atlantic World: A Digital History”
Nuala Zahedieh (University of Cambridge): “Canoes and capitalism: an indigenous technology in the early English Caribbean”
10:45-11:00am Coffee Break
11:00am-12:30pm Panel 3: Migration As A Breeding Ground for Resistance
Chair: Gad Heuman (University of Warwick)
Gelien Matthews (University of The West Indies, St. Augustine Campus): “Eliza Fenwick’s Private Account of the Barbados Servile War of 1816”
Heather Freund (University of Copenhagen): “An Island Divided: Maroons, the Kalinago, and the British in St. Vincent”
Gunvor Simonsen (University of Copenhagen): “A Business of Freedom? Marronage and Maritime Transport in the Nineteenth-Century Lesser Antilles”
12:30-1:45pm Lunch
1:45-3:15pm Panel 4: Circulation and Movement: Trade, Labor and Family Networks
Chair: Heather Cateau (University of St. Andrews/UWI)
Sebastian Gómez González (Universidad de Antioquia): “Alias ‘El Mompoxino’ y el negocio del contrabando en el istmo de Panamá y las Antillas, 1730-1746”
Yevan Terrien (University of Louisiana at Lafayette): “Wheel of Misfortune: The Intercolonial Slave Trade between the Caribbean and Colonial Louisiana in the 18th century”
Felicia Fricke (University of Copenhagen): “A Maritime Family Network at St. Barts, 1802-1829”
3:15-3:30pm Coffee Break
3:30pm-5:00pm Panel 5: New Research on Abolition: The Caribbean and West Africa
Chair: TBD
Chair: Suzanne Schwarz (University of Worcester)
Chair: Rebecca Goetz (New York University)
Henry B. Lovejoy (University of Colorado Boulder): “Quantifying ‘Liberated Africans’ in the Greater Caribbean, 1807-1866”
Suzanne Schwarz (University of Worcester): “Interrupted Middle Passages: Tracing the Movements and Identities of ‘Liberated Africans’ Released from Slave Ships Bound for the Caribbean, c. 1808-1819”
Mégane Coulon (Susquehanna University): “Transatlantic Connections: The Caribbean and the Colony of Sierra Leone”
Tuesday, May 28
9:15-10:45am Panel 6: Migration and Reversals of Belonging in the Caribbean Borderlands: Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Garifuna New York, 1850s-Today
Chair: Laura Rosanne Adderley (Tulane University)
Lara Putnam (University of Pittsburgh): “Violence Against Afro-Caribbean Immigrants in Venezuela, 1850-1950: A Regional and Comparative Assessment”
Sharika D. Crawford (United States Naval Academy): “From North End to Pañatown: How the Free Port and Tourism Sector Spurred Migration that Transformed the Colombian Island of San Andrés, 1953 -1972”
Kaysha Corinealdi (Emerson College): “Denationalization in Comparative Perspective: Panama and the Dominican Republic (1941-Present)”
Paul Joseph López Oro (Bryn Mawr College): “Central America’s Caribbean Coasts in/of Diaspora: Garifuna New Yorkers in the 21st Century”
10:45-11:00am Coffee Break
11:00am-12:30pm Panel 7: Transnational Caribbean Actors and the Making of Blackness in the Greater Circum-Caribbean
Chair: Lara Putnam (University of Pittsburgh)
Felix Jean-Louis (University of California): “Exporting the Revolution: Haitians and the Harlem Assemblages for Black Liberation, 1919-1934”
Tyesha Maddox (Fordham University): “Friends of Abyssinia: West Indian Immigrant Mutual Aid Societies and the Impact of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War”
Willie Mack (University of Missouri): “It was an attack on all of us’: Haitians and Black Americans in New York City and the Korean Grocer Boycott”
J. Marlena Edwards (Pennsylvania State University): “An Unintended Modality: American Whaling, Labor, and Race-Making in New Bedford Massachusetts, 1870-1930”
12:30-1:45pm Lunch
1:45-3:15pm Panel 8: Accommodating Practices
Chair: Jenny Shaw (University of Alabama)
Dexnell Peters (University of the West Indies, Mona Campus): “Religious pluralism, missionaries and the integration of the Greater Southern Caribbean in the Revolutionary Era”
Kristen Block (University of Tennessee): “Medicinal Springs in the Early Caribbean: Creole Healing Stories at the Intersection of Medicine and Race”
José Andrés Fernández Montes de Oca (University of Costa Rica): “West Indian Land Tenure in the Costa Rican Caribbean, 1870-1930”
3:15-3:30pm Coffee Break
3:30-5:00pm Panel 9: Reclaiming the Dutch Caribbean Space Within A Larger Regional Historical Context
Chair: Marjoleine Kars (MIT)
Margo Groenewoud (Independent Scholar): “Dutch Caribbean Radicals and the Spaces they Claimed”
Donate B. Philbert-Nieveld (University of Curaçao): “How regional and non-regional migration processes during the mid-nineteenth century influenced religious practices in the (Dutch) Caribbean”
Raimie Richardson, Camiel de Kom, and Arminda Franken-Ruiz (Department of History and Heritage for the Public Entity of St. Eustatius): “Towards Accessibility: Empowering (Dutch) Caribbean communities with diasporic colonial collections”
Wednesday, May 29
9:15-10:45am Panel 10: Rethinking Repatriation: Legacies of Colonial Collecting in the Caribbean
Chair: Alissandra Cummins (Barbados Museum and Historical Society)
Shani Roper (University of the West Indies): “Repatriation, Colonial Collecting and its Impact on National Natural History collections in Jamaica”
Arminda Franken-Ruiz (Independent Heritage Consultant): “The Return of Artifacts from Colonial Collections and its Effect on Museums and their Communities: The case of the National Archaeological Museum of Aruba and the Wereldmuseum in Leiden”
10:45-11:00am Coffee Break
11:00am-12:30pm Panel 11: Choices, Decisions and Policies In A Global Context of Changes
Chair: TBD
Diana Paton (University of Edinburgh) and Juanita de Barros (McMaster University): “Policing Public Space in Post-Slavery British Guiana, 1881-1897”
Anasa Hicks (Florida State University): “Decolonial Decisions: Cuba’s Choice at the Outset of Angolan Independence”
Joy D Lewis (Morgan State University): “The Two Virgin Islands: A Case Study in Transnational Interdependency”
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 Santa Marta.
Thursday, May 30
9:15-10:45am Panel 12: Migrants in the Colombian Caribbean in the 20th Century: Discourses, Diplomacy and Business
Chair: Julián Lázaro Montes (Universidad de Cartagena)
Ana Milena Rhenals Doria (Universidad Industrial del Santander): “De la xenofobia a la solidaridad transnacional: los obreros de Cartagena y la presencia de migrantes antillanos en Colombia durante el ascenso del socialismo, 1910-1930”
Laura De Moya-Guerra (Rutgers University): “The Chinese in the Barranquilla (Colombia) Carnival: Gender and Diplomacy 1960-1980”
Neil Del Valle Villarreal (Politecnico de la Costa Atlántica): “El almacén norteamericano SEARS en la Barranquilla de la ‘Prosperidad de Milagro’ (1953)”