Location: Clark Atlanta University

4:15 - 5:30 PM: Panel Discussion
Elemental Protest: Protest movements and the natural backdrop in the Virgin Islands
Moderated by TK Petersen, CFO and Co-Founder of The Gathering Spot

The members of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective will each present on the role of the natural environment in major revolutionary movements in Virgin Islands history and current day realities. Each speaker will use their particular artistic and scholarly methodology to present the history, the ecological realities and, moreover, to discuss how the natural world has been used by revolutionary actors to claim belonging with the Virgin Islands and how each of them, as artists and scholars, use this dichotomy to do revolutionary work within our disciplines. Visual artist La Vaughn Belle will present on Fire and its connection to St. Croix revolts and to her own work. Tiphanie Yanique will discuss Water and its role in revolutionary moments on St. Thomas and St. John and to her own work as a creative writer. Dr. Tami Navarro will highlight Air and its connection to protest movements on St. Croix and to her work as an anthropologist.  Dr. Hadiya Sewer will present on Land and its integration to protest movements on St. John and to her own work as a philosopher.   

5:30 PM: Exhibition Opening 
A Haunting Between Us  

September 19 – December 8, 2024 

The exhibition A Haunting Between Us, at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, reimagines colonial archives. Featuring work from Belle’s Swarm series, which delves into the Danish colonial archives and uses photographic images from the Danish West Indies. Belle reimagines these images through a method of cutting and burning that not only changes them, but utterly transforms their colonial context by removing black bodies from scenes of servitude and highlighting them as subjects of strength and perseverance. The exhibition also includes a sculptural installation that draws on oral history and archival records to focus on one of the first known defenses of Indigenous people and their sovereignty in the Americas.  

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Clint Fluker, Senior Director of Culture, Community, and Partner Engagement for the Carlos Museum and Emory Libraries.  

Location: Emory University

9:30 AM: Conference recap
Location: Woodruff Library, Jones Room, Third Floor 

Who is the Virgin Islands Studies Collective? What is Decolonial Feelin? And what do we do with hauntings, ruins, and raptures? Light breakfast provided.  

10:15-11:30 AM: Reading 
Professor Tiphanie Yanique, Emory University Department of English and Creative Writing
Location: Woodruff Library, Jones Room, Third Floor 

A reading of Yanique’s new short story, Beach, influenced by feminist literary traditions, Decolonial forms, and the importance of water in Caribbean societies. The story is set on a composite island of the Virgin Islands during the Carnival season.  

11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m.  Breath, Air, Life: Connecting Air Quality and Community Health on St. Croix
Dr. Tami Navarro, Drew University, Department of Africana Studies 
Location: Woodruff Library, Jones Room, Third Floor 

Focusing on the historic and beautiful island of St. Croix, Navarro explores fundamental connections between humans, ecosystems, and healthy living that have gone awry since industrialization. Consequently, “Breath, Air, Life” seeks to restore and improve human connections with the environments around us via attention to the common air we all breathe.  

2:30-3:30 p.m. Tour of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Location: Woodruff Library, Tenth Floor 

3:45-5:15 PM: Black As Nature
Dr. Hadiya Sewer, University of the Virgin Islands, Virgin Islands Caribbean Cultural Center 
Location: Woodruff Library, Jones Room, Third Floor 

This lecture explores the discursive relationship between climate disaster, land rights struggles and conceptions of sovereignty in the USVI. Specifically, Sewer looks at how the relationship between the “human” and the “nonhuman” shapes ecological and ontological sites of Black Resistance in America’s predominantly Black colony.  

6-7 PM: Curatorial Conversation: Visual Artist La Vaughn Belle and Clint Fluker  
Location: Michael C. Carlos Art Museum, Ackerman Hall, Level Three  

Come Ruin or Rapture, opening in the Carlos Museum’s John Howett Works on Paper Gallery on September 19, includes work from two of Belle’s series, Storm (in the time of spatial and temporal collapse) and Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental) in which she uses materials from her studio that were exposed to Hurricane Maria in 2017. These repurposed materials take on new forms and express the resilience of people of African descent in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the face of both natural disasters and colonial powers. The exhibition will be on view through December 8. 

The exhibition will be open before and after the conversation until 8 p.m.  

Location: Clark Atlanta Art Museum

9:30-11 AM: Ritual Ceremony & Altar-Making 
Dr. Hadiya Sewer, University of the Virgin Islands, Virgin Islands Caribbean Cultural Center 

Decolonization calls for greater attention to the afterlives of the dead. This ritual ceremony and altar-making event aims to cherish sacred sites and honor the interconnectedness of the living and the dead, the human, and those deemed nonhuman under the prevailing order. The ritual draws on obeah practices in the Caribbean, Black ontologies, and Sylvia Wynter’s theories on the human to map the bardo realms as a space for conceptualizing death, rebirth, and what Blackness teaches us about being and non-being. 

This workshop is limited to 45 people. 

11:30 AM-12:30 PM: Centering Positionality: How to Situate Yourself in a Research Project
Dr. Tami Navarro, Drew University, Department of Africana Studies 

Research is not an objective process: we bring our changing and multiple selves, histories, and opinions to the communities, texts, and scholarship we engage with. This workshop, featuring a key group activity and lively discussions, addresses how to ethically acknowledge researcher subjectivities and biases.  

This workshop is limited to 15 people.  

2:30-4 PM : Literary Tabanca: Decolonial Fiction Writing
Professor Tiphanie Yanique, Emory University Department of English and Creative Writing

A study for practitioners and instructors in creative writing on the methods and practice of writing decolonial endings in fiction. The lecture will provide answers to questions such as why do we need decolonial fiction? and what is decolonial fiction?, while also presenting a close examination on fictional endings in Caribbean, Virgin Islands and decolonial literature writ large. We will learn and then practice the art of writing endings in fiction that are beautiful, meaningful, and do decolonial work.   

This workshop is limited to 15 people.  

4:30-5:30 PM: Artist Talk
La Vaughn Belle: A Haunting Between Us   

Get an insider perspective of the creation and curation process of La Vaughn Belle’s exhibition A Haunting Between Us and what this exhibit means for our present and future. 

Location: Michael C. Carlos Museum

2 PM: La Vaughn Belle Gallery Talk 
Come Ruin or Rapture
John Howett Works on Paper Gallery, Level One 

Through exploring the material culture of coloniality, artist La Vaughn Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Join Belle for a gallery talk in the exhibition, Come Ruin or Rapture, featuring her works that were created with repurposed materials from her studio that were exposed to Hurricane Maria in 2017, exploring resilience, natural disasters, and colonial powers.   

This event is free, but space is limited, and registration is required.