Maria Cristina Fumagalli – författare

Studies of sexuality in Caribbean culture are on the rise, focusing mainly on homosexuality and homophobia or on regional manifestations of normative and nonnormative sexualities. The Cross-Dressed Caribbean extends this exploration by using the trope of transvestism not only to analyse texts and contexts from anglophone, francophone, Spanish, Dutch, and diasporic Caribbean literature and film but also to highlight reinventions of sexuality and resistance to different forms of exploitation and oppression. Contributors: Roberto del Valle Alcalá, University of Alcalá * Lee Easton, Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning * Odile Ferly, Clark University * Kelly Hewson, Mount Royal University * Isabel Hoving, Leiden University * Wendy Knepper, Brunel University * Carine Mardorossian, University at Buffalo, SUNY * Shani Mootoo * Michael Niblett, University of Warwick * Kerstin Oloff, Durham University * Lizabeth Paravisini, Vassar College * Mayra Santos-Febres, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras * Paula Sato, Kent State University * Lawrence Scott * Karina Smith, Victoria University * Roberto Strongman, University of California, Santa Barbara * Chantal Zabus, University of Paris 13

First book devoted to Derek Walcott's lifelong engagement with the Atlantic visual artsBringing together local, Atlantic and global dimensions and putting in dialogue and contextualising Walcott's work with the works of specific artists, it retraces Walcott's unique, empowering, but utterly neglected 'art history' Brings to the fore the importance and reverberations of interdisciplinary dialogues in the Atlantic world and in decolonising discourses and processesSheds new light on the ways in which Walcott conjugated his engagement with the European, North/South American and African American traditions, envisaged their relationship with Caribbean culture and redefined the role he believed the latter should and could play on an Atlantic and global scaleIs mindful of Walcott's attention to painting techniques but, most importantly, foregrounds his keen interest in the multiple narratives" that the visual works he was confronting not only explicitly revealed but also implicitly suggestedHighlights the attention Walcott paid to the circumstances and 'locations' of his encounters with the works in question (i.e. local settings, metropolitan museums and artbooks).Walcott's lifelong concern with painting and painters deeply inflected his aesthetics and politics. Walcott's interventions on the relationship between Caribbean and colonial history have been thoroughly scrutinised, but, arguably, Walcott was also keen to address and (re)write an art history of which, paraphrasing a line from Omeros, the Caribbean too was/is capable. Contextualising and putting in conversation Walcott's published and unpublished writings (poems, plays, essays, journalism) and his drawings or paintings (privately owned and publicly disseminated) with specific artists from the Caribbean, Europe, South and North America, Derek Walcott's Painters recalibrates and sharpens our understanding of Walcott's articulation of his own politics and poetics and of the Caribbean's contributions to Atlantic and global culture. "

Walcott's lifelong concern with painting and painters deeply inflected his aesthetics and politics. Walcott's interventions on the relationship between Caribbean and colonial history have been thoroughly scrutinised, but, arguably, Walcott was also keen to address and (re)write an art history "of which," paraphrasing a line from Omeros, the Caribbean "too" was/is "capable". Contextualising and putting in conversation Walcott's published and unpublished writings (poems, plays, essays, journalism) and his drawings or paintings (privately owned and publicly disseminated) with specific artists from the Caribbean, Europe, South and North America, Derek Walcott's Painters recalibrates and sharpens our understanding of Walcott's articulation of his own politics and poetics and of the Caribbean's contributions to Atlantic and global culture.

On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is a literary and cultural history which brings to the fore a compelling but, so far, largely neglected body of work which has the politics of borderline-crossing as well as the poetics of borderland-dwelling on Hispaniola at its core. Over thirty fictional and non-fictional literary texts (novels, biographical narratives, memoirs, plays, poems, and travel writing), are given detailed attention alongside journalism, geo-political-historical accounts of the status quo on the island, and striking visual interventions (films, sculptures, paintings, photographs, videos and artistic performances), many of which are sustained and complemented by different forms of writing (newspaper cuttings, graffiti, captions, song lyrics, screenplay, tattoos).Dominican, Dominican-American, Haitian and Haitian-American writers and artists are put in dialogue with authors who were born in Europe, the rest of the Americas, Algeria, New Zealand, and Japan in order to illuminate some of the processes and histories that have woven and continue to weave the texture of the borderland and the complex web of border relations on the island. Particular attention is paid to the causes, unfolding, and immediate aftermath of the 1791 slave revolt, the 1937 massacre of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans in the Dominican Northern borderland as well as to recent events and topical issues such as the 2010 earthquake, migration, and environmental degradation.On the Edge is an invaluable multicultural archive for those who want to engage fully with the past and present of Hispaniola and refuse to comply with the idea that an acceptable future is unattainable.

On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is a literary and cultural history which brings to the fore a compelling but, so far, largely neglected body of work which has the politics of borderline-crossing as well as the poetics of borderland-dwelling on Hispaniola at its core. Over thirty fictional and non-fictional literary texts (novels, biographical narratives, memoirs, plays, poems, and travel writing), are given detailed attention alongside journalism, geo-political-historical accounts of the status quo on the island, and striking visual interventions (films, sculptures, paintings, photographs, videos and artistic performances), many of which are sustained and complemented by different forms of writing (newspaper cuttings, graffiti, captions, song lyrics, screenplay, tattoos).Dominican, Dominican-American, Haitian and Haitian-American writers and artists are put in dialogue with authors who were born in Europe, the rest of the Americas, Algeria, New Zealand, and Japan in order to illuminate some of the processes and histories that have woven and continue to weave the texture of the borderland and the complex web of border relations on the island. Particular attention is paid to the causes, unfolding, and immediate aftermath of the 1791 slave revolt, the 1937 massacre of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans in the Dominican Northern borderland as well as to recent events and topical issues such as the 2010 earthquake, migration, and environmental degradation.On the Edge is an invaluable multicultural archive for those who want to engage fully with the past and present of Hispaniola and refuse to comply with the idea that an acceptable future is unattainable.