The University of Miami is recognized internationally for its interdisciplinary strength in Caribbean Studies. Our faculty stands at the forefront of the field, with a particular interest in transcultural and transnational connections across the region, hemisphere, and Atlantic world.
In the Department of English, faculty publish and teach on Caribbean literary and intellectual histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; literatures of immigration and diaspora; globalization; feminist thought; sexuality, national identity, and citizenship; popular cultures; and the contemporary visual arts. The department’s additional strengths in American, African American, and African literary studies, as well as in Early Modern literature, British and Irish literatures, and postcolonial studies foster a rich climate for the study of Caribbean literatures and cultures transnationally. In addition, the department supports the publication of Anthurium, a bi-annual, peer-reviewed, open access journal of Caribbean Studies that publishes original works and critical studies of Caribbean literature, theater, film, art, and culture in electronic form. Graduate students have the opportunity to apply for an RA-ship to work as assistant editors on the journal.
Department of History faculty members work on cultural, intellectual, political, and social histories of the Caribbean and Atlantic world from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. They study histories of colonialism, slavery, revolution, capitalism, emancipation, indenture, empire, nationalism, labor mobilization, the Cold War, neocolonialism, and globalization, through focal points such as law and religion, migration and travel, material cultures and consumption, medicine and healing, gender and sexuality, performance and sport. The department’s additional strengths in African, African diasporic, African American, Early Modern, Latin American, and United States histories encourage transatlantic, transnational, and interdisciplinary perspectives on Caribbean history, culture, and society.
Major areas of faculty focus in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, include Caribbean digital humanities; Caribbean and Latinx performance and theater studies; nineteenth through twenty-first century literatures of the Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean; sociolinguistics of the Hispanophone Caribbean; literatures of immigration and diaspora; globalization and transnational studies; colonial and postcolonial studies; transnational feminisms; and cultural policy. The department supports the publication of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive, an online resource for research, teaching, and learning in Cuban theater and performance as well as in related fields. Graduate students in MLL have the opportunity to apply for an RA-ship to work as assistant editors on the digital archive. Additional strengths in Africana, Arabic, Brazilian, Iberian, early Spanish American, and Latin American cultural and literary studies; as well as in Early Modern studies, gender studies, immigration studies, indigenous studies, and queer studies further enrich the study of Caribbean literature and culture in the department.
Beyond the Departments of English, History, and Modern Languages and Literatures, students pursuing the doctoral concentration are able to take relevant Caribbean-focused graduate courses in other departments. In the Department of Anthropology, for example, faculty scholarship and teaching on the Caribbean encompasses family and kinship; the cultural politics of race, sexuality, and gender; health, medicine, and human security; Black feminist and queers of color theory; violence and marginalization; and ethnographic methodology and writing. In the Department of Art and Art History, faculty work on Caribbean and Latin American modernisms, the work of Caribbean women artists, nineteenth century Caribbean portraiture, and Caribbean art in the global imaginary. In the Department of Musicology (part of the Frost School of Music) faculty study Caribbean music transnationally, with reference to wider African diasporic histories and cultures, and the contemporary forces and circuits of globalization. Areas of research and teaching focus include religion and healing; identity construction and nationalism; industry and audience; and cultural politics and policy. Students can also request that graduate courses in the Latin American Studies Program count towards the doctoral concentration.
The University of Miami is part of the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics. Our graduate students can take team-taught seminars hosted by the institute that combine the face-to-face quality of traditional classrooms with online collaboration, enabling students throughout the Americas to communicate and work together online. Students can also participate in the Hemi’s Caribbean Performativities Working Group as well as in the Encuentros and the Hemi Graduate Student Initiative. As a member institution, we also have access to the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL), which includes over 900 hours of videos of performance practices in the Americas.
