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MA & PhD Programs: Conferences
Conferences |
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The Department of English has been host, under the direction of Professor Lowell Fiet, to the Rockefeller Foundation for the Humanities Grant titled Caribbean 2000. Eminent scholars, among them Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Mervyn Alleyne, Helen Safa, Velma Pollard, and Jean Stubbs conducted their research on campus, gave talks, and advised students. The Rockefeller grant also made it possible to sponsor various junior faculty on short-term fellowships.
The English Department periodically holds conferences and summer institutes. In 1994, the department hosted the West Indies Literature conference whose proceedings became a special issue of the journal Caribbean Studies. In 1996, a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Summer Institute titled: Rethinking English in Puerto Rico (coordinated by Prof. Lowell Fiet, Alicia Pousada, and Ada Haiman) brought together scholars, public school teachers, and graduate students from all over the island, as well as illustrious guest speakers like Kenji Hakuta, Ana Celia Zentella, Peter Roberts, and Frances Aparicio. In 1997, the Department hosted another NEH Summer Institute, this time on Caribbean Popular Culture, with many of the faculty conducting sessions.
Another conference in which the English Department figures on an annual basis is the conference on Caribbean Popular Culture which is hosted by a different island within the Eastern Caribbean each year and serves as a broad forum for topics relating to history, language, literature, and culture in the English-speaking Caribbean.
Finally, our departmental seminar series regularly brings in guest speakers from Puerto Rico, the U.S., the U.K., and the West Indies to address a wide variety of topics. This contributes to a lively academic atmosphere in which students are actively involved.
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