Department of History

From Sarah Hannon: June 10-15, 2018, I attended the Association of Caribbean Historians’ fiftieth annual conference, hosted by the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. I presented a paper co-authored with my M.A supervisor, Dr. Neil Kennedy, entitled “Anxiety and Self-Assurance in Negotiating Emancipation in Bermuda’s House of Assembly.” As my first conference, this was an incredible learning experience for me, and I could not have imagined a more intellectually stimulating, challenging, and inspiring event. We explored vital topics such as the interplay between history and digital archives, hurricane impacts on Caribbean educational and heritage sites, and Caribbean emancipation, and I was honored to sit on a panel alongside Sir Woodville Marshall, the only member of the Association to have attended every conference. It was my great pleasure, as well, to attend presentations by some of the foremost scholars of New World slavery, whose groundbreaking work I have long admired and to whom I owe a great intellectual debt, such as the brilliant Dr. Natasha Lightfoot and Dr. Marisa Fuentes. I have learned more than I thought possible, and the opportunity to engage with historians from around the world has redoubled in me the desire to contribute to this exciting and increasingly critical field. I was pleased to make many new friends and contacts, and for the first time to truly place my own work within a dynamic community of scholarship in which I felt included, and to whom I now feel responsible to continue my own research with honesty and intellectual rigour.

As my first visit to the Caribbean, this trip was also an incredible opportunity for me to immerse myself in the history and culture of the region. On the final night of the conference, we visited the historic Old Garrison site of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society for the launch of a museum exhibit on the history of the Association of Caribbean Historians, and we were treated to a short play featuring renditions of many of Barbados’ traditional folk songs. At the annual dinner and fete, we enjoyed delicious homestyle Bajan food, including macaroni pie, grilled chicken and fish, and beans and rice topped off with Barbados’ ubiquitous hot pepper sauce. On my own time, I also had the great pleasure to visit the Friday night fish fry at Oistins, a weekly event which always draws a pulsing crowd of locals and visitors alike. Finally, driving back to the airport on my last morning, I got to see the Bussa Emancipation Statue, a triumphal and deeply compelling national art piece featuring a freed man raising his closed fists to the sky, the chains of slavery hanging broken from his wrists.

(Sarah’s participation was in part funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council CGS-M fellowship)