The Black Jacobins Revisited:
Rewriting History Conference

 27–28 October 2013 International Slavery Museum and Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool

Registration: As places are limited, please register as soon as you can online at: http://blackjacobins.brownpapertickets.com/

Registration must be completed by 1 September 2013 at the very latest

 

Conference Programme

 

Sunday 27 October, International Slavery Museum, Liverpool

9.30–11.00      Plenary Session One

 Robert A. Hill (UCLA and C.L.R. James’s Literary Executor), Truth, the Whole Truth, and Revolution-making in The Black Jacobins

 Bill Schwarz (QMUL), title tbc

11–11.15         Coffee break

11.15–12.45 Panel Sessions One

1          James’s Haitian revolution plays

 Christian Høgsbjerg (Leeds Met), ‘The Artist Must Elect to Fight for Freedom’: Paul Robeson and the Haitian Revolution

 Rachel Douglas (University of Glasgow), Making Drama of the Haitian Revolution From Below:C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins (1967) Play

 Raj Chetty (University of Washington, Seattle), Can a Mulatta be a Black Jacobin?: James, Feminism, and the Place of Collaboration

2          James Rewriting Marx

 Raphael Hoermann, (Giessen University), The Eighteenth Brumaire of Toussaint Louverture? C.L.R. James’s Poetics of Anti-Colonial Revolution in The Black Jacobins and Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire

 Reynaldo Ortiz-Minaya (SUNY–Binghamton), Towards a Political Economy of Chattel Slavery: C.L.R. James and Marxist Theory as a Way to Re-assess Slave Agency and the African Diaspora

 Joanna Tegnerowicz (University of Wroclow), ‘And now tell us that we are not worthy of freedom ...’: Revolutionaries, Race and ‘Civilization’

12.45–1.30 Lunch

1.30–3.00 Panel Sessions Two 

1          Francophone Caribbean Perspectives on James

 Fabienne Viala (University of Warwick) Sabotage, commemoration and performance: The Black Jacobins and Maryse Condé’s An Tan Revolysion

 Kelly Brignac (Vanderbildt) ‘His Most Paternal Chest’: Bourbon Royalism and the Death of Paternalism in Nineteenth-Century Martinique

 Daniel Nethery (University of Sydney) The Black Jacobins, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon

2          The Black Jacobins and Pan-Africanism

 Sharon Elizabeth Burke (European University Institute, Florence) ‘Reading The Black Jacobins as Pan-African’: C.L.R. James and the Greater Diasporic Historical Consciousness

Peter Fraser (London Met), Generalising the Message of The Black Jacobins: The History of Negro Revolt

Nigel Carter (London Met), Educate-Co-operate-Emancipate: C.L.R. James's  A History of Pan-African Revolt

3.00–3.15 Coffee

3.15–4.45 Panel Session Three

Haitian Connections

 Raphael Dalleo (Florida Atlantic University) ‘The independence so hardly won has been maintained’: C.L.R. James and the U.S. Occupation of Haiti

 Rafael Gómez (SUNY), In-between the Saints and the Spirits?: Toussaint L’Ouverture’s curious relationship with Voodoo reexamined

4.45–5.30 Plenary Session 2

 Rawle Gibbons (University of the West Indies, Director of three Caribbean Productions of The Black Jacobins Play), Dechoukaj!: The Black Jacobins and Liberating Caribbean Theatre

 Yvonne Brewster (Director of London Production of The Black Jacobins Play; Founder of Talawa Theatre Company), title tbc

6–7.30 Buffet/wine Reception, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool

7.30 Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. A Reading of Extracts

 First performance since 1936 of precursor to C.L.R. James’s classic history of the Haitian revolution The Black Jacobins, which started life as a play with Paul Robeson in the lead

Monday 28 October, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool

9.00–10.30 Panel Session Four

Contesting History

 Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (California State University, San Marcos), Beyond The Black Jacobins: Recent Historiography on the Haitian Revolution

 Courtney Gildersleeve (University of Minnesota), Facing a Revolutionary: Toussaint Louverture in Bordeaux and Historical Reckoning

 David Featherstone (University of Glasgow), The Black Jacobins, Contested Universalities and Insurgent Geographies of Connection

10.30–10.45 Coffee Break

10.45–12.15 Plenary Session Three

 Nick Nesbitt (Princeton), title tbc

 Matthew J. Smith (University of the West Indies), title tbc

12.15–1.00 Lunch Break and Class Wargames  with Fabian Tompsett (London Psychogeographical Association and Author), Richard Barbrook (University of Westminster), Stefan Lutschinger (Middlesex and State University of Saint Petersburg), Battle of Bedourete: Table-top Simulation of The Black Jacobins

1.00–2.30 Panel Session Five

Leaders and Masses in The Black Jacobins

Joseph J. García (University of New Mexico), The Windward Passage to Charismatic Revolutionary Leadership

Scott Henkel (Binghamton), ‘There are 2,000 Leaders’: C. L. R. James from Slave Revolt to Direct Democracy

Patrick Sylvain (Brown University), Architects of Coup D’état: Bitter Rivalry Among Early Haitian Revolutionary Generals

2.30–4.00 Panel Session Six

Performing Revolution

 Jeremy M. Glick (Hunter College), C.L.R. James looks at St John the BaptistPreaching: Bodily Compression and Oceanic Logic of Un-gendering in Robeson, Rilke, Rodin

 Sayan Bhattacharyya (University of Michigan), The Theatrical Imagination in the Conceiving of an Alternate, Non-West-Centric Modernity: The Case of the Plays of Rabindranath Tagore and C.L.R. James

 Jerome Teelucksingh (University of the West Indies), Rise of the Black Jacobins: Impact of the Haitian Revolution

4.00–6.00 Plenary Session Four

 Selma James (activist and writer), title tbc

 Frank Rosengarten (CUNY), The Interplay between Literature and History in C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins

 Selwyn Cudjoe (Wellesley), title tbc