Working Groups

As we face global crises related to identity, displacement, and environmental instability, Glissant’s ideas of “Creolization”, “Relational”, “antillanité”, “errant”, and the “Tout-monde” offer frameworks for interdisciplinary exploration of the Caribbean and beyond. The Glissant Research, Reading and Work in Progress Collective (GRRWPC) is intended to succeed the Fanon Research Collective both intellectually and methodologically. While the Fanon Research Collective focused on the analytical and groundbreaking thinking in Fanon’s major works, the GRWPC aims to explore Glissant’s broader ideas.

The GRWPC wishes to connect the diverse strengths of Rutgers’ humanities departments, institutes, and research centers to develop a scholarship inspired by Fanon, Glissant, and others. The GRRWPC will invite faculty and graduate students working in these areas to present their work-in-progress manuscripts.

This is a multidisciplinary working group that follows up on the Fanon Research Collective, dedicated to exploring Édouard Glissant’s literary legacy and his thinking on right “Opacity”, “Ecology”, “Creolization”, and the “Poetics of Relation,” to name a few. It will function as a yearly scholarly collective reading group where work-in progress is presented by faculty and graduate students working in these areas. Ultimately, the GRWPC culminates in a one-day symposium in the spring of 2028 to mark the 100th anniversary of Édouard Glissant’s birth.

The GRRWPC is interdisciplinary and housed under the CCA. It will invite partnerships with the following departments and institutes: Critical Caribbean Studies, French & English Departments, the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGJ), European Studies, Philosophy, the Center for African Studies (CA), History, and Comparative Literature. It will also strengthen the rich intellectual networks and enhance ties between Rutgers and Francophone Caribbean scholars at home and abroad.

Organizers