The Preliminary PhD Reading List: Hard Times Ahead (or, Yay Caribbean Literature)
If you didn’t know, I’ve been hard at work putting together my committee and reading list for my PhD exams, which I intend to take in March or April of next year. The list will likely change in the next few weeks, given feedback from my director, but I thought you’d all like to see what I’m up to academically. For those that don’t know, I am writing my PhD on the relationship between the Caribbean and the space of Empire (spatiality). In particular, my work will be an attempt to conceptualize how Empire is spatially constructed and how such constructions are reflected in the literature and resisted/manipulated/etc. by Caribbean peoples/characters/authors/etc. The idea is to (hopefully) mold together my work on Hopkinson and Buckell for the MA into a larger project on Caribbean literature. With that in mind, here is the list I’ve so far constructed. Feel free to offer suggestions of your own, as this reading list is only for my exams and not necessarily for my final project. Here goes: Novels (Early Period) The English in the West Indies, Or, the Bow of Ulysses by James Anthony Froude Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole Rupert Gray, a Study in Black and White by Stephen N. Cobham (Modern and Mid-20th Century) Emmanuel Appadocca by Michel Maxwell Philip Minty Alley by C. L. R. James A Morning at the Office by Edgar Mittelholzer Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Contemporary) The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul Frangipani House by Beryl Gilroy Cambridge by Caryl Phillips A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging by Dianne Brand (Genre and Related Contemporary) Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell (note: there is a fourth book coming out in this series, which I may add to this list at a later time) Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord Theory, History, etc. (Spatial Theory) The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre The Urban Experience by David Harvey The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History by Paul Carter The Archaeologies of the Future by Fredric Jameson The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (Caribbean History, Postcolonial Theory, etc.) Writing in Limbo by Simon Gikandi Poetics of Relation by Edouard Glissant The Repeating Island: the Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective by Rojo Antonio Benitez The Pleasures of Exile by George Lamming The British Caribbean: From the Decline of Colonialism to the End of Federation by Elisabeth Wallace