<p> Improvisation is regarded as the most sublime element in the <i> j&iacute;baro</i> folk music tradition of Puerto Rico. This tradition originated by the <i>j&iacute;baro</i>, the simple rural farmer of Puerto Rico's heartland, involves the complicated art of improvising in d&eacute;cima, a ten-line poetic form, as well as improvisation of melodic lines played on the cuatro, a small guitar-like instrument. Since <i> j&iacute;baro</i> improvisation is an art that is transmitted orally and involves a seemingly spontaneous act, it might seem odd to talk about a theory of improvisation within this style of music. My ethnographic research however has revealed that improvisation in <i>j&iacute;baro</i> music is actually a highly structured performance practice and involves an informal theory that is based on the knowledge of archetypal patterns that generate and organize <i>j&iacute;baro</i> improvisations. </p><p> Recent theories of music which establish parallels between music, language, and cognition (Lerdhal and Jackendoff; Clarke; Gjerdingen) have lead me to believe that improvisation in <i>j&iacute;baro</i> music is generated by the combination of archetypal patterns that create a musical syntax. These patterns are stored in minds of <i>j&iacute;baro</i> performers as cognitive schemas. My study is also based on the work of Puerto Rican scholars Luis M. Alvarez and Angel Quintero who have identified African rhythmic patterns as the generative musical source in many styles of Puerto Rican folk music. By combining theories of music and ethnographic methods, this paper will provide a greater understanding of orally transmitted cultural expressions, which utilize improvisation, as well as give insight to the cognitive processes that shape this performance practice.</p>

<p> This study traces the history of birth control and reproductive politics in the West Indies from the 1930s to the 1970s, focusing on Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, and Bermuda. During this period, a diverse group of activists began to organize in order to spread modern contraceptives to the working classes. These efforts provoked widespread debate over reproduction and led to the opening of the region's first birth control clinics from the 1930s to 1950s. Birth control advocates also pressured politicians to support the cause, and by the late 1960s/early 1970s nearly every newly-independent government in the region had committed itself to state-funded family planning services. </p><p> Utilizing papers of family planning advocates and associations, government records, newspapers, pamphlets, and reports, this study places these birth control campaigns and debates within the context of Caribbean political and social movements, the rise of the international birth control campaign, working class family life and gender relations, the decline of British rule, and the expansion of political independence across the region. It demonstrates that &mdash; as argued by much of the scholarly literature on the international birth control movement &mdash; early campaigns in the West Indies were initiated and funded largely by local and foreign (white) elites, and were pushed by many conservative actors who blamed political and economic instability on working class (black) fertility as a means to stave off wider reforms. However, this study also shows that the birth control cause found support among a much wider demographic on these islands, including anti-imperial politicians who incorporated birth control into broader development plans, doctors, nurses, and social workers who saw it as a critical measure to aid working class families, black nationalist feminists who argued that it was a woman's right, and working class women and men who seized the opportunity to exercise a measure of control over their reproductive lives. These actors shaped both reproductive politics and the delivery of birth control services on the ground over the course of the twentieth century, producing campaigns that were more diverse, decentralized, and dynamic than they appear on the surface.</p>

The Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (1904--1980) and painter Wifredo Lam (1902--1982) draw upon Surrealism in their representations of an Afro-Cuban religiosity in their early Negrista works. Through a comparison of Carpentier's &iexcl;Ecue-Yamba-O! (1933) and "Historia de lunas" (1933) with a selection of Lam's works of the 1940's---"The Jungle" (1942), "The Eternal Presence" (1945), "The Wedding" (1947), and "The Visitor" (1950)---this analysis uncovers how both writer and artist use collage and a surrealist mood in representing certain aspects of Afro-Cuban religiosity, specifically Abacua ceremonial incantations, Itutu, and trance or possession. This thesis also attempts to unmask the limitations of these techniques as a representational paradigm in limning the Afro-Cuban.

This study examined the influence of acculturation on disordered eating attitudes and behaviours of Afro-Caribbean women living in Canada. 134 Afro-Caribbean women, aged 18-35 years, completed an online questionnaire evaluating body satisfaction, two indices of acculturation, adaptation and maintenance, and disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. One domain of acculturation, Canadian cultural adaptation, was found to moderate the relation between body satisfaction and disordered eating: Those who most strongly identified with Canadian culture had the strongest relation between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating and attitudes. Disordered eating attitudes and behaviours were reported most often in individuals with high Canadian cultural adaptation and identification with Canadian values. Suggestions for further research and clinical implications are discussed

This study engages with select disease narratives of the Anglophone Caribbean through the lens of post/colonial theory, cultural criticism and the social history of medicine. Focusing on the biological image and metaphor of infection, as opposed to its more popular associations with hybridity and creolization in post/colonial theory, I argue that disease discourses facilitate more complex iterations of identity than the less dynamic, more static categories of ‘race’ (black versus white), cultural affiliation (British, Indian, African or West Indian) or political identity (coloniser versus colonised) and propose a theory of infectious entanglements, by which I demonstrate and interrogate complex and transphenomenal representations of West Indian identity across ‘racial’, cultural and political boundaries. Primary texts include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medical tracts on leprosy and tropical fevers; contemporary medical and cultural texts on HIV/AIDS; and works of fiction by writers such as Harold Sonny Ladoo (Trinidad/Canada), Frieda Cassin (Britain/Antigua) Lawrence Scott (Trinidad/Britain) and Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua/United States). My literary, cultural and historical analyses of biological representations of leprosy, tropical fever and HIV/AIDS suggest that each disease facilitated the construction of multiple cordons sanitaires, whose conceptual boundaries intersected and overlapped in different ways. These points of entanglement, I demonstrate, are useful sites for interrogating post/colonial constructions of identity in light of the relative fluidity of some boundaries (such as changing ideas about who is infectious and who can become infected, as with HIV/AIDS and leprosy) and the hardening lines of others (such as intersecting ideas about tropical fever, pathogenic environments and the emergence of medical cartography). More importantly, such intersections sometimes revealed the entanglement of medicine and other organs of post/colonial authority in past and ongoing othering projects and their legitimising roles in the articulation of essential difference. This dissertation is divided into three parts, each focusing on a particular disease that is iconic in post/colonial narratives about the Caribbean. Part 1 focuses on leprosy, Part 2 on tropical fever and Part 3, framed as a conclusion to this study, focuses on contemporary narratives of HIV/AIDS in the context of earlier narratives of leprosy and tropical fevers. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2010-11-24 21:35:20.277

No description available.

<p> During the 17^th Century, the Caribbean saw an explosion in seaborne raiding. The most common targets of these raids were Spanish ships and coastal towns. Some of the men who went on these raids experienced degrees of social and economic mobility that would not have been possible in continental Europe. This was because the 17^th Century Caribbean created an environment where such mobility was possible. Among these was a Welshman was known to his compatriots as Harry Morgan. By the end of his life, Morgan would become one of the most famous buccaneers in history, a wealthy sugar planter, the Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, and a knight. </p><p> No one is exactly sure of Morgan's social status before he entered the Caribbean. Historians largely agree that he was born to a freeholding family in Wales, although some dissenters contend that Morgan entered the Caribbean as an indentured servant. From either position, he experienced a high degree of social and economic mobility through his raids against the Spanish Empire and the conventional businesses that those raids funded. His life does not represent the way that social or economic mobility worked for a typical buccaneer. What it does represent is the best case scenario for an individual who came to the Caribbean and engaged in buccaneering. Morgan utilized his raiding as a means to fund more conventional business interests such as sugar planting. This paper argues that the Caribbean provided a unique political, economic, and military atmosphere for an individual to climb the social and economic ladder from Harry Morgan, a common buccaneer, to Sir Henry Morgan, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica and Admiral of Buccaneers.</p>

<p> Le fran&ccedil;ais repr&eacute;sente une langue dominante au Qu&eacute;bec et aux Antilles. Cependant, il n'arrive pas toujours &agrave; exprimer les r&eacute;alit&eacute;s de ces peuples. Alors, pour rendre compte des valeurs ch&egrave;res aux populations locales, les auteurs qu&eacute;b&eacute;cois et antillais ont recours &agrave; l'int&eacute;gration du joual et du cr&eacute;ole dans leurs textes respectifs. Etant donn&eacute; que ces langues sont plus souvent utilis&eacute;es par les couches d&eacute;favoris&eacute;es, les milieux populaires offrent, du coup, un cadre id&eacute;al pour un tel proc&eacute;d&eacute;. Il s'agit, dans cette &eacute;tude, de proc&eacute;der par une analyse sociolinguistique, sociohistorique et socioculturelle du joual et du cr&eacute;ole, en partant des espaces choisis, en l'occurrence le Qu&eacute;bec et les Antilles. Lesdits espaces partagent des r&eacute;alit&eacute;s semblables quant &agrave; l'utilisation de la langue comme moyen de d&eacute;fense et de revendication culturelle et identitaire. En outre, &eacute;tant donn&eacute; que le joual et le cr&eacute;ole sont deux langues orales, il se pose la question de la transcription de l'oral &agrave; l'&eacute;crit, ses m&eacute;canismes et ses fondements. Entendu que les &eacute;crivains Qu&eacute;b&eacute;cois et Antillais ont un rapport &eacute;troit avec la langue, comment l'utilisent-ils pour affirmer leur identit&eacute; ? Devant les nombreux d&eacute;fis &agrave; relever, notamment la pr&eacute;servation du fran&ccedil;ais au Qu&eacute;bec et l'affirmation d'une identit&eacute; communautaire, ainsi que la cr&eacute;olisation des Antilles, les &eacute;crivains ont recours &agrave; des techniques particuli&egrave;res qu'il convient de d&eacute;couvrir, dans un contexte de diversit&eacute; et d'affirmation identitaire. Aujourd'hui, l'&eacute;volution des pratiques langagi&egrave;res am&egrave;ne les auteurs et leurs lecteurs &agrave; parler l'anglais et le cr&eacute;ole car d&eacute;sormais, la mixit&eacute; des langues est un facteur &agrave; consid&eacute;rer dans l'affirmation de l'identit&eacute; des Qu&eacute;b&eacute;cois et des Antillais.</p>

No description available.

In Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a transnational tourist town located on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, masculinities are expressed and embodied in multiple ways as a result of particular interactions that take place at the convergence of the global and the local. This thesis interrogates the masculine performances of Western tourist men in the context of a hierarchy of desirability complexly located at the intersections of sexuality, tourism, and globalization. Specifically, I argue that tourist men construct their masculinities in contestational and oppositional ways to those of local Caribbean men - constructions mediated through their homosocial encounters with men (both local Caribbean and foreign men), as well as their heterosexual intimate relationships with local women – in order to increase their statuses as more sexually desirable subjects in Puerto Viejo’s sexual landscape.