The Caribbean Unbound IV - Reconceiving Hispaniola Explores Interdisciplinary Topics

05/05/2009

From April 2-4, 2009, Franklin College Switzerland basked in the light of the Caribbean as it hosted the fourth biennial Conference of Caribbean Literature and Culture. The 2009 edition of the Conference, entitled The Caribbean Unbound IV—Reconceiving Hispaniola, was held in Sorengo (Lugano) on the Kaletsch campus of the College and open to students and the general public.

Franklin College welcomed some 40 participating scholars during The Caribbean Unbound IV for an examination of the boundaries between Haiti and the Dominican Republic as seen through literature and art. The conference was composed of a variety of activities including keynote speeches, academic panels, films, open forums and the now famous student-prepared Caribbean dinner.

"‘Reconceiving Hispaniola' was an attempt to focus attention on a lesser known part of the Caribbean," said Dr. Robert H. McCormick, Jr., founder of the Franklin College Conference on Caribbean Literature and Culture. "The conference focused on the border separating Haiti from the Dominican Republic and on the difficulties Haiti especially has been confronted with over the past years."

The three-day exploration of Caribbean themes began with Jean-Claude Fignolé's keynote address, "Marvelous Realism! Metamorphosis of the Real?" on the evening of Thursday, April 2. The keynote address was conducted in French and co-translated into English by Kaiama Glover from Barnard/Columbia and Kathleen Gyssels from the University of Antwerp. The auditorium seats were packed for the lecture, which was followed by a reception, generously sponsored by the Franklin College Alumni Council in honor of Fignolé, and then the showing of the film The Agronomist.

The two days following the keynote speech offered a wide selection of inter-disciplinary topics exploring the history, politics, art, literature, religion, film and music of the Caribbean and, more specifically, of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. "Besides Jean-Claude Fignolé's keynote address, there was also a second keynote presentation by Fabienne Pasquet, a Haitian-Swiss novelist, on the illuminations behind her novelistic production," said Dr. McCormick. "Jarett Gilbert, a former president of the Franklin College Literary Society, introduced a Cuban film for a Spanish-speaking panel and gave a presentation on a Dominican author with a scholar from Goucher College. The conference closed with an open forum wherein five Haitians, including Fignolé and Franklin student Joyce Algarade, rather informally discussed their links to Haiti." Panels were held primarily in English, but there were also a few conducted in French and Spanish.

Regarding the dinner held on Friday night for the conference participants and some 160 student and staff attendees, Dr. McCormick was quick to point out that the meal was "a student-generated affair: students decided on the menu, bought, prepared and served the food, decorated the North Campus dining room with flags from Hispaniola and cleaned everything up afterwards. A superb job for which I received many compliments from conference participants on behalf of the Literary Society."

The Franklin College Conference on Caribbean Literature and Culture was first organized some six years ago by Dr. McCormick, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Franklin College. Previous editions of the Caribbean Unbound featured Antonio Benítez-Rojo, J. Michael Dash and Maryse Condé as keynote speakers. Multi-cultural in conception, the conference has grown to global dimensions. This year, literary and cultural scholars from prestigious academic institutions in Bern, the U.S., Italy, Portugal, the U.K. and Belgium participated in the Caribbean Conference.

Keynote speaker Jean-Claude Fignolé is an acclaimed Haitian novelist who, together with the Haitian writers Franketienne and René Philocète, is the co-founder of the Haitian literary movement, "Spiralisme." In addition to his first two novels, Les Possédés de la pleine lune (Seuil, 1987) and Aube tranquille (Seuil, 1990), he also published Moi, Toussaint Louverture in Montreal (Plume & Ancre) in 2004.  From 1990 to 2000, Fignolé wrote a column for Haiti's oldest and largest daily newspaper, Le Nouvelliste. In January, 2008, Fignolé published Une heure pour l'éternité with Parisian publisher Sabine Wespieser. A teacher as well as an art critic, Jean-Claude Fignolé is also the mayor of Les Abricots, a small village in southwestern Haiti.

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