Editorial Team

SPOTLIGHT ON OUR SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR

MARTA FERNANDEZ-CAMPA

Celebrating 10 years with Caribbean InTransit!

Marta Fernández Campa is a scholar specializing in Caribbean literature and culture. She earned her PhD in Caribbean Literature and Culture from the University of Miami in 2013, following an MA in Postcolonial Literatures and a BA in English Philology from the Complutense University in Madrid.

Currently, she serves as an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she teaches a module on Caribbean Women Writers. Her research focuses on alternative forms of memory that challenge official histories, particularly in the context of the Caribbean. She has explored the interplay between literature and visual arts, as well as the archival processes of authors concerning their literary papers.

Fernández Campa has contributed to leading journals in Caribbean and postcolonial studies, including Anthurium, Callaloo, Small Axe, and sx salon. She has also published a chapter on Caribbean literature and visual culture in the third volume of Caribbean Literature In Transition and authored the monograph Memory and the Archival Turn in Caribbean Literature and Culture, part of Palgrave’s Caribbean New Studies series.

In addition to her academic roles, she is the Special Projects Editor at the journal Caribbean InTransit and serves as the Caribbean area specialist editor at Postcolonial Text.

Her current project delves into family history, the 1934 strike, and the Spanish Civil War, reflecting her ongoing interest in memory and historical narratives.

KEISHA

Keisha Oliver is Bahamian assistant professor of Art and Design at the
University of The Bahamas, and a Ph.D. candidate in the dual-title Art
Education and African American and Diaspora Studies program at the
Pennsylvania State University. As an artist-scholar whose research
intersects heritage studies and arts pedagogy, Oliver’s current work
focuses on African diasporic art histories and archives. She currently
stewards the Charles Blockson Collection of African Americana and
The African Diaspora at Penn State and serves on several boards and
councils for arts organizations in the Caribbean and United States. Her
research has been published internationally in the areas of museum
studies, visual arts research, Bahamian art, and Caribbean art history.
She is also an arts writer and independent curator .

EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER OF THE CARIBBEAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION

MEAGAN

Meagan A. Sylvester is a Caribbean scholar whose doctoral research
focused on Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Socamusic.
Her continuing interrogation within the academy centers on Music,
Gender, and National Identity in Calypso and Soca, Music of Diasporic
Carnivals, Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and RaggaSoca music,
Steelpan and kaisoJazz musical identities. Teaching and research
interests are Caribbean Music Cultures and African Diaspora Popular
Culture. She holds memberships in professional organizations which
include the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association
of the Study for Popular Music, Caribbean Studies Association and the
Association of Black Sociologists.

Other Editorial Team Members

E D I T O R - I N - C H I E F

Dr.Marielle Barrow

S P E C I A L P R O J E C T S E D I T O R

Dr. Marta Fernandez- Campa

F I C T I O N S E D I T O R

Dr. Njelle Hamilton

V I S U A L C O M M U N I C A T I O N S S P E C I A L I S T

Ms. Keisha Oliver

A N I M A T I O N E D I T O R

Ms. Camille Selvon- Abrahams

A R T S , E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P & I M P A C T E D I T O R

Dr. Sacha Joseph- Mathews

C O M P U T A T I O N A L D E S I G N E D I T O R

Dr. Vernelle A. Noel

F R A N C O P H O N E E D I T O R

Dr. Maica Gugolati

Our Team

What does Urban Transit mean for a Caribbean creative landscape constantly in motion—not just through the physical geography of cities, but through the inner geographies of identity, memory, and aspiration? Urban Transit is more than the movement of bodies or ideas through space—it is the negotiation of identity, power, and possibility.

“Urban Transit,” seeks to critically interrogate the shifting dynamics of
body, institution, and memory within an emerging hybridity of cultural
production grounding them in broader cultural and sustainable
development goals. While noting the particular moment in which we find
ourselves- a seeming post-crisis moment of the fiction of COVID, we
recognise that post-pandemic is perhaps much in keeping with neocolonial realities that return us to questions of residues and fractious
conditions. While disconcerting, we anchor ourselves through our long
held visions of assembling a global Caribbean married to a parallel notion
of “global Africa” toward cultural confidence and economic
empowerment of our region.

In Homi K Bhabha’s 1994 text Location of Culture he speaks of
“Gatherings in the ghettos or cafés of city centres; gathering at the
frontiers; gatherings in the half-life, half-light of foreign cultures; gathering
the signs of approval and acceptance, degrees, discourses, disciplines;
gathering the memories of underdevelopment, of other worlds lived
retroactively; gathering the past in a ritual of revival; gathering the
present.” His poetic notions underscore the diverse spaces where cultural
negotiation have traditionally occurred and reflect the complexity of
identities formed in these intersections. He captures the dynamic and
transformative processes involved in the creation of meaning and
community in contexts of displacement, hybridity, and postcolonial
experience

In the Black American context, *Urban Transit* similarly navigates a
landscape of movement shaped by histories of displacement, migration,
and resistance. From the Great Migration to the present, Black
communities have continuously redefined urban space, carving out
networks of culture, activism, and entrepreneurship amid systemic
exclusion. The city—whether Harlem, Chicago, or Atlanta—becomes both
a site of possibility and contestation, where Black creativity emerges in
the interstices of gentrification, racialized policing, and economic
disparity. In this sense, the idea of “gathering” extends beyond physical
space into an ongoing negotiation of belonging, memory, and futurity—
mirroring the Caribbean’s own reckoning with colonial residues and postcrisis realities. Through this lens, we see *Urban Transit* as a diasporic
practice, forging new solidarities between a global Black consciousness
and the evolving geographies of culture and power.

We pick up on a more recent deliberation where Christopher Cozier, co-Guest Editor of CIT Issue 7 speaks of his notion of “free association”. He considers how issues of cultural confidence play out in his critique that as a society “we kind of hover between Miami-fication and Singapore-ification. We never actually get into the business of acknowledging who we are, what we’ve discovered, and what we can bring to the world.” In this interview with Special Projects Editor, Marta Fernandez, he speaks positively on the notion of “itinerancy, and all that the Caribbean has conjured as a spatial dynamic is very corrosive to the social orders of other societies.” These ruminations are significant especially when brought into conversation with creative economy concerns, as this positive interference of which he speaks nevertheless often leaves us without the systemic infrastructure required to build in strategic ways

From a sustainable creative economy perspective as cultural production aligns with SDGs and contributes to Caribbean GDPs, we think of modes of tourism – productions for sale at home: this involves the creation and commercialization of cultural products within the local market, contributing to the domestic economy and cultural preservation;digital exports of cultural content: distribution of Caribbean music, literature, and other creative works through digital platforms allows for global reach, enabling artists to monetize their creations beyond physical boundaries; Services provided in foreign markets: artists, such as musicians, who perform abroad, thereby exporting cultural services and generating revenue from international audiences. Further, the earnings captured via foreign book publishers and music labels from Caribbean productions are not directly remitted to the Caribbean.

In what ways does or should the itinerant nature of Caribbean artists influence the development of systemic infrastructure necessary for a sustainable creative economy in the region?

Additional sub-themes and queries aim to stimulate a diverserange of submissions while connecting theoretical
discussions to actionable frameworks.

Our starting point at the moment for thinking about this anniversary edition hearkens to earlier work while propelling us forward, rooted and routed via various kinds of communities and networks which develop the broader body politic; who through their artistic practices build agency; tap into global politics; and simultaneously contend with dissonance within their worlds.
Our curatorial process for this issue as in past issues is in some ways experimental. In an effort to include a larger number of curatorial voices, perspectives and even practices, we are inviting curators in the Caribbean to put forward recommendations of works which extend and complicate our discourse.
We are committed to enablement and development of the Caribbean arts through dialogue and exhibition in varying creative forms and so during production, we will continually think and plan for how our work can sit alongside developmental processes already occurring within these communities and further enable such efforts.
We recognize that artistic elites operate in every community to the exclusion of other practitioners and so we open a section of the exhibition to independent artists who operate differently in relation to recognized artistic communities and who feel that their works and their process have a meaningful, critical perspective to contribute to our discussion.
Caribbean InTransit’s efforts in supporting and stimulating connections between communities and institutions has produced a network of productions and exhibitions that circulate the theme of “Body, Institution, Memory”. This widens and deepens our reach and the inclusion of multiple voices in approaching this theme with a developmental agenda. The critical perspectives produced by these symposia, discussions, essays and publications will contribute to the development of this anniversary edition. In this regard, we invite Caribbean InTransit team members and contributors who practice in the arts or write about it to submit their own considerations. We aim to include these submissions in some aspect of our final output
We would like to invite other Caribbean focused journals, magazines or platforms to contribute to this anniversary edition in the form of an essay or other production which extends or responds critically to this conversation in collectively thinking about how we would like to develop the Caribbean arts community going forward.

THEMATIC CONSIDERATIONS

"Resonance and Reflection: Music, Memory, and the Museum in Caribbean Creative Futures"
"Cultural Currents: Music, Museums, and the Hybridity of Urban Transit"
"Soundscapes and Memoryscapes: Bridging Past and Future in the Caribbean"
"Museums of Sound, Archives of Memory: Hybrid Cultural Ecosystems"
"Echoes of the Caribbean: Music, Museums, and the Transit of Identity
Soundscapes of Resistance and Resilience
Museums as Living Archives
From Festival to Archive: Urban Transit in Practice
How does the mobility of festivals—Carnival, Carifesta, or Diaspora-themed arts events—act as living archives that link tradition and contemporary practice?
AI as Curator:
Smart Festivals: Technology and Urban Transit
AI in Memory and Storytelling
AI’s role in creating interactive oral histories and memory archives.
AI Ethics and Cultural Sovereignty
Digital Equity and Inclusion in Caribbean Creative Industries
How can AI democratize access to cultural and creative resources for underrepresented Caribbean communities?
What constitutes a hybrid cultural ecosystem, and how can it address the unique challenges of the Caribbean creative industry

SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT FOR CONSIDERATION BY FEBRUARY 15TH

SUBMISSIONS

We welcome essays, in English, Spanish or French. Artwork, music, dance, poetry, mas or junkanoo designs or any other artistic expression with blurbs in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, dialect or creole are welcome as well as films in any language with subtitles in English. Fiction or non-fiction writings in English or dialects will be accepted. Writings in dialect should be accompanied by a translation of terms. Research papers on visual or vocal modes of expression as well as interviews of contemporary artists in English are also welcome.

ALL Submissions should be accompanied by the following in one document in this order:

Name
Professional affiliation
Contact information
Title of Attached manuscript
Keywords, at least 3 (essays only)
An abstract of not more than 150 words (essays & interviews only) *a biography of not more than 60 words
A professional photograph of yourself (optional)

Essays, Interviews and Reviews: Text including endnotes must be in Microsoft Word format (double-spaced, in a readable font) and images in jpg. format. Titles in the body of the text should be italicized with section titles in bold. All essays must have accurate bibliographies. MLA format should be used. Video/sound clips can be sent via e-mail or on CD/DVD.

Word limits for various submissions are as follows:- Academic papers: 7500 words Reviews: 3000 words Profiles/Essays on Artists and Art Work: 1000-1500 words Upcoming Events/Releases/Shows or highlights from arts organizations: 100-250 words

Submit your work here: