West Indian author and literary scholar Carolyn Cooper (right) will give the 2005 Jagan Lecture on Oct. 22. Billed as a Caribbean dialogue, her lecture is titled “Sweet and Sour Sauce: Sexual Politics in Jamaican Dancehall Culture”. It begins at 7:30pm in Vari Hall Lecture Room A.
Cooper is a literary and cultural studies professor at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, where she teaches Caribbean, African and African-American literature. She is also director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies, and coordinator of the UWI’s International Reggae Studies Centre, an academic project she initiated.
Cooper has written two books on Jamaican popular culture. The first, Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture, was published in Britain in 1993. Her second, Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large, was published in New York in 2004.
This is the sixth annual Jagan Lecture, commemorating the life and vision of the late Cheddi Jagan, Caribbean thinker, politician and political visionary. The event is co-organized by York’s Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC), York’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, York International and the Jagan Lectures Planning Committee.
For more information about the lecture and the lecture series, visit the CERLAC Web site, e-mail cerlac@yorku.ca or call ext. 55237.