Emilia Azcarate (Venezuela-Spain)
A Caribbean artist who currently lives and works in Madrid. She has participated in different collective exhibitions such as: Arco 99 (Luis Adelantado Gallery, Madrid); Cosecha 98 (Grupo Li Centro de Arte, Caracas); Salón Jóvenes con FIA (Ateneo de Caracas, Caracas); Arco 98 (Luis Adelantado Gallery, Madrid); III Salón Pirelli de Jóvenes Artistas (Sofía Imber Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas, Caracas); V Biannual of of Visual Arts Christian Dior (Consolidated Cultural Center, Caracas) in 1997; Cosecha 97 (Grupo Li Centro de Arte, Caracas); I Biannual National of Landscape (Mario Abreu Museum of Contemporary Arto of Maracay, Maracay) in 1996.
In 1998 she exhibited Work on Paper (Sala Mendoza, Caracas) and in 1997 Perforated Paths (Ars Forum Gallery, Caracas). They have both been individual exhibitions. She has been recognized with the Honorary Mention (V Biannual of Visual Arts Christian Dior, Consolidated Cultural Center, Caracas) in 1997 and the Third Price (I Biannual National of Landscape, Mario Abreu Museum of Contemporary Arto of Maracay, Maracay) in 1996.
Carmen González Marín (Spain)
A PhD in Philosophy (U.A.B, 1990), she has taught at the Universities of Zaragoza, Salamanca, San Luis (Madrid Campus) in Spain and at the Universities of Boston and Massachusetts in the USA. In the University of Carlos III in Madrid she is Vice Dean of Academic Interchange and Promotion. Her training as a researcher developed at the University of Harvard, Princeton (I.A.S.), in Geneva, and in the Institute of Philosophy of the C.S.I.C. Her research focuses on the problems of language that demand a moral perspective (performances, different types of political slogans, for example in the area of feminism, etc.) Feminist theories and the dark relationships between philosophy and literature (which she modestly practices) are also part of her reflections. She has published From the Lie (2000). She is part of the organization of this conference.
Lorna Goodison (Jamaica-Estados Unidos)
She is one of the best known poets of the caribbean region. Her career as a writeer began in 1980 when she published her first book of poetry, Tamarind Seasons: Poems. With the publication of her second book in 1986, I am Becoming My Mother, she won significant international noteriety and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has also published: Heartease (1988), Poems (1989), Selected Poems (1992), To Us, All Flowers Areoses (1995), which was given a Gold Star by Booklist magazine; Turn Thanks (1999), Guinea Woman (2000), Travelling Mercies (2001), Controlling the Silver (2005), Goldengrove (2006). Goodison has published two collections of short stories, , Baby Mother and the King of Swords ( 1990) and Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005). In 1999 she was awarded with the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature. Her most recent book is a memoir, From Harvey River (2008). Throughout her career she has lived in Jamaica and the United States.
Carmen Rivera Villegas (Puerto Rico)
She obtained a PhD with honors from Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee) with a thesis titled Woman, Nation and Modernity in the Work of Julia de Burgos. She is Associate Lecturer of the Department of Hispanic Studies of Mayagüez of the University of Puerto Rico, where she teaches courses of Puerto Rican poetry. Her research revolves around the discourse of modernity in Puerto Rican poetry, travel literature in the Caribbean and Mexico, as well as the rhetorical confluence between art and literature. She is one of the editors and essayists in the book the The Vanguards of Puerto Rico: Contexts and Pretexts of the Rupture which will be published shortly with the publishing house La Discreta Academia.
Awilda Sterling Duprey
Awilda Sterling Duprey is an interdisciplinary artist who is active in visual arts, dramatic interpretation, cinema and television, “Performance”, experimental dance and the contemporary Caribbean, and independent cultural investigation. She has an MFA in painting from the Pratt Institute in New York. She is professor of visual arts at the School of Fine Arts in San Juan. She teaches specialized courses in afro-caribbean culture, and gives conferences on afro-caribbean dance through her workshop From Oricha to the Shore...Saints in Salsa, an original concept for the cultural study of Cuba and Puerto Rico by means of music, and religious and popular dance in New York between the years 1975-1985. Her biggest passion is the Caribbean and its cultural expressions which are in constant flux, reason for which she has travelled extensively throughout the region with her work in various professional exchanges. she has worked in Puerto Rico, the United States, mostly in the city of New York, Central and South America, in addition to Madrid and the Algarve, Portugal. She is currently doing a doctorate in Puerto Rican and Caribbean History in the Center for Advanced Studies, in old San Juan. Sterling Duprey had distinguished herself in the following documentary and cinematographic projects in Puerto Rico: Burundanga (Poli Marichal); La recién nacida sangre y Mutantes (Juan Carlos García); La taca diabólica y Páramo (Bachillerato Dpto. de Comunicaciones, USC) and Don Amor (Canal 13, Chile y WIPR, Puerto Rico).
Gloria Wekker (Surinam - Holanda)
A social and cultural anthropologist, specialized in Gender Studies, Studies about Sexuality, Afro-American and Caribbean Studies. Since 2001 she maintains the Cátedra IIAV of Gender and Ethnicity of the School of Arts of the University of Utrecht. She is coordinator of the master program, “Comparative Studies About Woman in Culture and Politics”, as well as director of GEM, the center of experts in Gender, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism in higher education in the same university. Her research interests include: the construction of sexual subjectivity in the black diaspora, the history of blacks, the movement of migrant workers and refugees in the Low Countries, systems of knowledge in the academy and dutch society affected by gender and ethnicity; and higher eduction in the Low Countries. In April of 2006, Columbia University Press published The Politics of Passion; Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora for which she received the Ruth Benedict Prize from the American Anthropological Association (2007). Another recent publication of which she is co-writer is Je hebt een kleur, maar je bent Nederlands. Identiteitsformaties van geadopteerden van kleur (Utrecht University 2007).
Ian Bethell (Bahamas - Puerto Rico)
A PhD from the University of Warwick, he specialized in Comparative Cultural Studies and Caribbean Studies. He was consultant to the program “Masculinity, HIV, and Gender Violence” of the Interamerican Commission of Woman belonging to the Organization of American States in Washington, DC. Amongst his recent publications, the following are noteworthy: What Does Sweetin’ Goat Mout (2006); Migrating Subjects: Understanding Reactions to Migration and Regionalism in the Bahamas of the publishing house Ian Randal Publishers; Diasporic Wanderings: Jaques Stephen Alexis, Edwidge Danticat; Economy, Migration, Identity: Haitians in The Bahamas Understanding a Country’s Reaction to CSME, Re-Mapping the Americas.
He is currently professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.
Jesús “Chucho” García (Venezuela)
Coordinator of the Center of African-American Studies Acosta Saignes of the U.C.V. (1988-1993). Editor of the magazine Africamérica. Coordinator of the Afroamérica Foundation and the Afrovenezolana Network. Member of the directory of the Afro-Latin American Strategic Alliance which unites more than 200 Afro organizations in the continent. He has published various books about the African diaspora in Latin America such as: Africans, Slaves, Maroons, and Caribeanness: Afro-Caribbeanness and Afro-epistemology (2006), book which received the National Book Award given by the Ministry of Popular Power for Culture of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
D. Juan Varela- Portas de Oruña (Spain)
He is currently professor of the Department of Italian Literature of the Complutense University of Madrid; after 20 courses as professor of Spanish language and literature in secondary education. He is the author of two books about the work of Dante Alighieri and editor of authors such as Cecco Angiolieri and Giovanni Boccaccio. He has published close to 50 articles about Italian medieval literature and Spanish literature, classic as well as contemporary. He is the editor of the Spanish edition of the poetry of Julia de Burgos, in two volumes that have been published by La Discreta Academia.
