World Conference on C A R N I V A L Showcasing the Caribbean |
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May 15, 1998 Dear Carnival enthusiast, scholar, performer, or artiste: We would like to invite you to participate in a spectacular event linked to that edition: a World Conference on Carnival showcasing the Caribbean to be held at Trinity College, Hartford, Ct., this coming September 9 - 13, 1998. Our project is to put Caribbean Carnival and its analogues throughout the Americas into a comparative worldwide perspective, highlighting the public festival of Carnival as a key event through which people perform -- and in the process reformulate -- a sense of personal and social identity. Scholars, carnival experts, artists, performers, and presenters from around the world will examine, perform, and witness carnivals and the carnivalesque. This conference recuperates the central historical importance of the Caribbean region. For over five hundred years, the Caribbean has served as the axis of trade, commerce, and cultural flows in the Americas; the very idea of the "New World" grew out of a chain of historical encounters and developments initiated in the Caribbean. The history of the Americas has continued to be centered around the region during subsequent centuries. Through this process, the Caribbean has emerged as a nexus of cultural identities and sensibilities that inform contemporary social life in the Americas. The World Conference on Carnival is a unique opportunity to see and connect Caribbean, Latin American, and European Carnival in one place. We invite you to join an international community of renowned scholars in exploring this dynamic and exciting tradition The goal of a special issue of the prestigious journal The Drama Review devoted to Trinidad Carnival and launched at the Conference, of the World Conference itself, and of the subsequent book is to redefine the basic concepts of Carnival and the carnivalesque. This could be important; it will be fun. You can offer a paper or just join the discourse. Please see the list of seminar topics and a registration form. For more information, use the contact numbers on the enclosed flyer. In the spirit of carnival, join us! Sincerely yours, Milla C. Riggio For more information, please contact the organizers
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