Skip to main content
International Institute Int Institute
  1. HOME
  2. Faculty Groups
  3. Past Groups
  4. Caribbean Studies Working Group

Caribbean Studies Working Group

Liaison Faculty Member

Bonnie Kaiser, Department of Anthropology, Global Health Program, bnkaiser@ucsd.edu

Hanna Garth, Department of Anthropology, hgarth@ucsd.edu

Faculty

Bonnie Kaiser (Anthropology, Global Health Program)

Hanna Garth (Anthropology)

Isabel Rivera-Collazo (Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Anthropology)

David Grelotti (Psychiatry)

Jose Fuste (Ethnic Studies)

Jade Power Sotomayor (Dance)

Richard Feinberg (Global Policy Studies)

Sara Johnson (Literature) 

Graduate Students

Mariela Declet Perez

Eric Rodriguez

Cheyanne Jennings

David Longley

Goals and Themes

This working group aims to bring together scholars from social sciences, arts, humanities, and medicine with a focus on the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora. Although UCSD has a number of initiatives and institutes promoting research on Latin America, there is yet to be a collaborative space to advance scholarship and interdisciplinary research focused on the Caribbean. This region’s complex colonial histories, languages, religions, music, food and art make it vital to consider as part of the broader Latin American context and experience. Yet the Caribbean archipelago is often overlooked in such scholarship - including within existing programs at UCSD - which instead focus on continental Latin America.

Our goal is to refocus the lens onto the Caribbean experience, not theorized as unique and separate, but as an integral part of the Latin American region. The focus of the working group is therefore on identifying and promoting synergies, connectivities, and networks. For example, one useful conceptual framework for such integrative theorizing is the concept of aquapelago (Nash 2012) or aquapelagic assemblages (Hayward 2015). While the term archipelago draws attention to islands - as distinct, atomized, and physically disconnected - the notion of aquapelago instead turns the focus to water in considering space and region. Such reconceptualization emphasizes connectivity, shared ecology and uses of space, as well as the connections between land and water, particularly among island groups. Additionally, the incorporation of Caribbean diaspora as a core focus of the working group extends the emphasis on connectivity and networks across space.