The Caribbean, Diaspora, and Atlantic Studies Program is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students interested in the Caribbean region and Brazil. Following Sidney Mintz’s insightful definition of the Caribbean as a socio-cultural area, we focus on three main linguistic/cultural zones: the Francophone, Anglophone, and Hispanic Caribbean, including Brazil. Drawing on Antonio Benítez Rojo’s notion of “the repeating island,” we study the Caribbean as a multi-layered, multi-ethnic society resulting from a complex set of factors--the sugar plantation, European colonization, and transatlantic slavery. From this basic premise, we trace the routes of a cultural triangle joining Africa, Europe, and the Americas in criss-crossing journeys and transnational cultural flows.
