UCL Institute of the Americas Caribbean Seminar Series: Nicole Burrowes

Seeds of Solidarity explores the historical possibility of a movement forged by those at the edges of empire in the midst of economic, political, and environmental crises.  The project’s intervention is three-pronged: to center the 1930s and working people in the development of modern politics in the Caribbean; to expand the framework of “overlapping diasporas;” and, by examining the seeds of solidarity, to counter generations of hegemonic narratives that focus exclusively on racial discord. British Guiana’s popular and labor organizing tradition during this period represents a radically different set of possibilities from the narrower racialist visions that were ultimately realized.  

Dr. Nicole A. Burrowes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her scholarship focuses on African Diaspora Studies, with specialization in Caribbean and African-American history. She is a twentieth century historian of social justice movements, relational histories of racialization and colonialism, Black Internationalism, and the politics of solidarity. She is an affiliate with the Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies, Africana Studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies, and serves a Faculty Fellow in Residence at the Honors College. Beyond academia, she has extensive experience in community organizing and documentary film.