a modest wish/vision — not quite a proposal The lobby of our Campus Center has — just inside the door, before you get to the campus store or the food court or anything else — an oldish looking piano painted
Making in the blood
I am spending this 2021-22 year writing about genealogy and family history, and I am spending this year (the first of several, I hope) being trained as a weaver. Those undertakings — both of which are creative, both of which
Making-sense
I would like this to be a post about how I feel … attached to, even inhabited by or at least dwelling alongside the things I make, but I do not yet have language for that.[1] So it will be
Creativity, Positionality, and Vulnerability: Caribbean-Reading the Romance Novel
This is the text of an invited talk I presented at the Creative Counterpoints Symposium at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design on March 18, 2016. I’m posting it here because it’s terrifying that I gave this talk at
Caribbean Family Sagas and the Critique of Genealogy
© Rachel L. Mordecai, University of Massachusetts Amherst Note: This is the lightly amended text of a paper presented at the Caribbean Symposium, University of Connecticut – Hartford, in May 2019. Introduction Family-saga novels – like the nations which they
Caribbean Family Sagas: a chronology
This is probably (certainly) procrastination, but it’s also a way of managing sadness over the fact that I’ve amassed this wonderful archive of Caribbean family sagas, most of which (for reasons of space) will not appear in any significant way
Covid-19 thoughts
I have spent a lot of time wondering what the climate apocalypse will look like when it hits North America squarely in the centre, not just the most vulnerable people in small pockets here and there, and I believe COVID-19
Climate-crisis work and/on university campuses – or ours, at least
When I started this blog I really hoped that I would post at least once or twice a month — but life, of course, took over. As it does. Anyway, right now I’m involved in a few things that all
ENGL 300 Caribbean Family Sagas, Fall 2019
English 300-04: Junior Year Writing: Caribbean Family Sagas (Fall 2019) Mo/We 2:30PM – 3:45PM This seminar will investigate how the conventions of the family-saga novel are used to ease anxieties of belonging among contemporary Caribbean subjects (whose ability to claim
Caribbean Women’s Textile/Textual Practices as Archives of Memory and Mourning
a paper I delivered at the West Indian Literature Conference, University of Miami, October 5, 2018 abstract: In the Caribbean, textile practices such as sewing, embroidery, crochet and tatting have long served a double role within the gender education of