ends & beginnings

After nine months in New York City as Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, I’m back home. My work in the past academic year focussed on furthering the awareness and knowledge of the Dutch Caribbean as part of the transnational Caribbean in a wider Atlantic perspective. Presenting and discussing my work in courses, conferences and guest lectures (11 in total) impacted this awareness, provoked discussion and improved the visibility of my research and the work of other Dutch Caribbean writers. This resulted in the development of a still growing network of Caribbean scholars, and several invitations to publish and/or lecture (a total of 7 articles pending for publication in 2023-2024).¹

At CUNY, I thoroughly enjoyed participating and presenting in Sophie Maríñez, Ph.D.‘s rich and thought provoking course ‘Postcolonial Caribbean Thought and Aesthetics’. The Fulbright Outreach Lecturing Fund enabled me to guest lecture in several institutes in Southern California, at the invitation of my wonderful friend and admired scholar Chelsea Schields. With her also, I rounded up the series of guest lectures with a wonderful event at CUNY Graduate Center:

Another definite highlight of my scholarship was the May 2, 2023 symposium organized with CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Library and CUNY DSI Associate Director Pierre Losson, PhD about the Transnational Future of Digital Humanities in Caribbean Studies, with too many esteemed colleagues to mention. The full symposium is online in two episodes:

I am deeply grateful for the fact that my scholarship and fellowship enabled me to do research in libraries and archives in New York, NY, College Park, MD, Washington, DC, and in the Dominican Republic.

Last but not least, in the past year I have had access to a wide range of research materials in online databases through the City College of New York temporary staff access and New York Public Library membership. For me as a researcher based in a very small country (Curaçao) with limited access to these resources, this has been invaluable.

A big thank you to all those who made this possible, and to new friends!

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¹ Published, forthcoming & submitted/accepted abstracts during my residency:

Groenewoud, Margo. ‘Digital Humanities, Social Justice and the Pluricultural Realities of Dutch Caribbean Heritage Archives’, in Alex van Stipriaan, Luc Alofs, Francio Guadeloupe, eds. Caribbean Cultural Heritage and the Nation. Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao in a Regional Context. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.

–. ‘Methode: Digital Humanities’, in: Staat en slavernij: Het Nederlandse koloniale slavernijverleden en zijn doorwerkingen. Amsterdam: Athenaeum, Polak & Van Gennep, 2023.

–. ‘Slave registers and the chaotic world beyond data and borders’. Working Paper for the research symposium ‘Lives in Slavery’, March 16, 2023, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

–. ‘Garvey in De West. Hoe antiracisme vooral buiten de Caribische koloniën ontvlamde’, article submitted to the Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. (forthcoming)

–. ‘”We go together in freedom”: monuments, identity politics and agency in the formative years of the Netherlands Antilles, 1940-1960’. Abstract accepted for: Independence, Colonial Relics and Monuments in the Caribbean, St. Augustine: University of the West Indies (UWI), 2023. (forthcoming)

–. ‘New York, Cuba, and the Birth of a Subversive Dutch Caribbean Writer: An Introduction to P.P.M. de Marchena’s ‘Women and Modern-Day Life’ (1934)’ in Rose Mary Allen and Sruti Bala, eds. The Dutch Caribbean Gender Studies Handbook. Leiden/New York: Brill Publishers, Series: Handbooks in Caribbean Studies, 2024 (forthcoming).

–. ‘Women artists between the parochial and the transnational: positionality and activism in the formative years of the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname (1930-1954)’, abstract submitted for the edited volume Reconceptualizing Caribbean Modernism, for Brill Publishers, Series: Avant-Garde Critical Studies, 2024 (forthcoming)