Caribbean Literature and Cultural History—Cultural Encounters in the Eye of the Hurricane
, with Lars Jensen

Wednesday, October 14 and 21, 2026, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Research Station.

The study group is free.

 

Street Academy explores Caribbean cultural history as reflected in literature. The format is a kaleidoscopic exploration of some of the Caribbean’s many contributions to our understanding of the world. The Caribbean is a place where global North-South inequalities are laid bare from both a contemporary and historical perspective. But the Caribbean is also a place where modern society is founded on both good and evil, a multicultural melting pot since Columbus—and indeed even before—a place of exchange for full cultural expression. This is what has nurtured a long line of writers—from poetry, through literature and art, to non-traditional scholars—who have explored global relations by turning things upside down. Often in hybrid formats, such as when Aimé Césaire writes about anticolonialism while employing poetry and drama as forms, or Frantz Fanon’s anticolonial works, which rethink the world through an anticolonial psychiatric perspective. Or Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who reimagines the Western image of the Haitian people, thereby challenging the Western self-understanding of the American and French revolutions. Or a long line of authors—some from the Anglophone world, others from the Francophone and Hispanophone worlds—who, through fictional universes, interpret Caribbean cultural history—and Western history in particular—through the lens of diaspora literature. We’ll discuss this further in an advanced discussion group.

 

About Street Academy:
Street Academy is a new initiative at the Experimental Station where artists, academics, and activists come together to
share knowledge, foster reflection, and develop new forms of critical and political practice.

 

Lars Jensen is a former associate professor at R.U.C. in the fields of cultural studies and postcolonial studies.

Lars Jensen is the author of, among other works, *Postcolonial Denmark: Nation Narration in a Crisis-Ridden…*, published in 2018, and *Postcolonial Europe*, published by Routledge in March 2020.