R Cummings
Biographic Data
| ID | 14736 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Cummings |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Cummings |
| SIGNATURE | CUMMINGS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brock University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6375-3913 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Cultural Studies in a Time of War
“He Had a Sympathetic Understanding of Everybody”: Remembering Sam Selvon — a Conversation with Ramabai Espinet
In this interview the writer Ramabai Espinet converses with Nalini Mohabir and Ronald Cummings about her encounters with Samuel Selvon and with his writing across the years. Her memories range from her girlhood in San Fernando to memorial gatherings for Selvon in the diaspora. Through these accounts she maps an understanding of Selvon as part of his literary generation and traces his unique place in Trinidadian letters. What emerges is a deeply s…
Of Selvon and Sentimentality: Diasporic Rememberings
This essay serves as an introduction to the special issue on Samuel Selvon. It offers reflections on what it means to remember Selvon today one hundred years after his birth in 1923 and after his centenary in 2023. It also situates the discussions that make up the special issue in relation to each other and in relation to the wider critical field of scholarship on Selvon’s work
Prefigurings Remembered
This essay serves as an introduction to a suite of essays exploring the significance and resonance of Charles V. Carnegie's Postnationalism Prefigured (2002). The occasion for these reflections is the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the book. The authors' discussion examines the place of Carnegie's work in relation to questions of Caribbean intellectual genealogies. They locate him multiply: as a student of the 1960s generation and as…
On Capture Land
Among the narratives recounted in Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return, is a story of Rastafari longing for return. This discussion considers that story, told to Brand by a friend, alongside Chronixx’s song “Capture Land” and Nabil Elderkin’s short film, “Captureland.” In reading these works together, I use the concept of “capture land” to engage with the question of the authority of maps. I also examine how these works narrate land, col…
Toward a Post-Apologetic University
This is a reflection on the uses of university apologies, prompted by the recent apology offered by Concordia University for its mishandling of Black students’ complaints of institutional racism in 1969, which culminated in the Sir George Williams University student protest, the largest protest against racism on a Canadian university campus
Protests and Pedagogy: The Legacies of Caribbean Student Resistance and the Sir George Williams Protest, Montreal 1969
Following two weeks of a peaceful sit-in protest, on February 11, 1969, the Montreal riot police stormed the Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) computer centre and assaulted and arrested nearly one hundred people. The students at Sir George had been protesting their experiences of discrimination and the university’s failure to take seriously their complaints about racism on campus. This discussion explores the significance of the 1969…
Dialogues: Reviewing the Queer Caribbean
Born of a cross-journal collaboration between sx salon and Anthurium, this conversation engages book reviews of critical works within queer Caribbean scholarship
Promiscuous Archiving: Notes on the Joys of Curating Black Queer Legacies
On 5 June 2018, the ArQuives in Toronto (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives) hosted a public conversation between Ajamu and Courtnay McFarlane titled “Promiscuous Archiving: The Joys of Curating Queer Black Legacies.” The exchange published here is a follow-up to that public dialogue. It not only returns to some of the terms, gestures, narratives, and critical provocations of that previous discussion but also expands on several of tho…
Caribbean Literary Historiography and the Jamaican Literary 1950s
This essay utilizes an alternative politics of directionality as a way of reentering the mid-twentieth-century Caribbean literary archive. Rather than focusing on Windrush as the main orienting point, this discussion examines and regrounds what events and institutions in Jamaica might tell us about the literary 1950s. Beginning by rethinking the historiographical gaze toward London, the author then raises key questions about what the narrative of…
Ain't no black in the (Brexit) Union Jack? Race and empire in the era of Brexit and theWindrushscandal
This article examines Brexit and the Windrush scandal as twin manifestations of the border anxieties that have structured questions of belonging in contemporary Britain. It discusses Paul Gilroy's There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack and Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack as two texts which attend to questions of race and empire in the mid-20th century in relation to British national identity. Both Clarke and Gilroy situate …
An Archive of Loose Leaves
This interview provides a rich account of Frank Birbalsingh's experiences from his early life in colonial British Guiana in the early part of the twentieth century to his continuing work as a literary scholar and critic in diaspora. What is also revealed is a thoughtful critical reflection on the Caribbean, its multiplicity, and its course of change over a lifetime. The discussion also traces Birbalsingh's migrations to India, Canada, New Zealand…
And the Disenchantment of Empire
This article contextualizes 1865 as a key moment in global history and in the world of the British Empire. Central to this discussion is a theorization of the concept of keydates, which is developed through a reconsideration of Raymond Williams' important cultural studies text Keywords. Taking 1865 as an important keydate, the authors examine how temporality as an organizing hermeneutic and as a site of study might function to reorient discussion…
"Between here and "not here: Queer desires and postcolonial longings in the writings of Dionne Brand and José Esteban Muñoz
This article examines the concepts of “not here” in Dionne Brand’s work and “not yet here” in José Esteban Muñoz’s work. These concepts are linked with queer desires, but also postcolonial longings and visions for other political and social possibilities. Both Brand’s and Muñoz’s writings rephrase and rearticulate various Third World social revolutions as part of their examination of queer possibilities, practices and narratives. Their work reins…
Maroon In/Securities
This essay uses the concept of “Maroon in/securities” to refer to a number of creative practices of survival and a range of experiences and feelings that converge in the Maroon narrative. These two terms, when brought together, productively facilitate a dialogue between Maroon studies and security studies that might lead to keen interventions in both fields. The concept first allows us to talk about military praxis (and in particular, guerilla wa…
The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities, written by Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Bénédicte Ledent & Roberto del Valle Alcalá (eds.)
(Trans)nationalisms, Marronage, and Queer Caribbean Subjectivities
This discussion focuses on discourses of queer subjectivity, Maroon identity, and their relationship to Caribbean nationalism. A key aspect of my argument here is the idea that both queerness and marronage are marked by complex insider/outsider identity positions that resist and complicate binarist discourses of belonging and unbelonging. I situate them instead as “crossroads identities” shaped through processes of the contestation and refashioni…
Agricultural Change in Vietnam's Floating Rice Region
Maroon In/Securities
This essay uses the concept of “Maroon in/securities” to refer to a number of creative practices of survival and a range of experiences and feelings that converge in the Maroon narrative. These two terms, when brought together, productively facilitate a dialogue between Maroon studies and security studies that might lead to keen interventions in both fields. The concept first allows us to talk about military praxis (and in particular, guerilla wa…
Ain't no black in the (Brexit) Union Jack? Race and empire in the era of Brexit and theWindrushscandal
This article examines Brexit and the Windrush scandal as twin manifestations of the border anxieties that have structured questions of belonging in contemporary Britain. It discusses Paul Gilroy's There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack and Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack as two texts which attend to questions of race and empire in the mid-20th century in relation to British national identity. Both Clarke and Gilroy situate …
Agricultural Change in Vietnam's Floating Rice Region
Caribbean Literary Historiography and the Jamaican Literary 1950s
This essay utilizes an alternative politics of directionality as a way of reentering the mid-twentieth-century Caribbean literary archive. Rather than focusing on Windrush as the main orienting point, this discussion examines and regrounds what events and institutions in Jamaica might tell us about the literary 1950s. Beginning by rethinking the historiographical gaze toward London, the author then raises key questions about what the narrative of…
And the Disenchantment of Empire
This article contextualizes 1865 as a key moment in global history and in the world of the British Empire. Central to this discussion is a theorization of the concept of keydates, which is developed through a reconsideration of Raymond Williams' important cultural studies text Keywords. Taking 1865 as an important keydate, the authors examine how temporality as an organizing hermeneutic and as a site of study might function to reorient discussion…
"Between here and "not here: Queer desires and postcolonial longings in the writings of Dionne Brand and José Esteban Muñoz
This article examines the concepts of “not here” in Dionne Brand’s work and “not yet here” in José Esteban Muñoz’s work. These concepts are linked with queer desires, but also postcolonial longings and visions for other political and social possibilities. Both Brand’s and Muñoz’s writings rephrase and rearticulate various Third World social revolutions as part of their examination of queer possibilities, practices and narratives. Their work reins…
Agricultural Change in Vietnam's Floating Rice Region
(Trans)nationalisms, Marronage, and Queer Caribbean Subjectivities
This discussion focuses on discourses of queer subjectivity, Maroon identity, and their relationship to Caribbean nationalism. A key aspect of my argument here is the idea that both queerness and marronage are marked by complex insider/outsider identity positions that resist and complicate binarist discourses of belonging and unbelonging. I situate them instead as “crossroads identities” shaped through processes of the contestation and refashioni…
The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities, written by Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Bénédicte Ledent & Roberto del Valle Alcalá (eds.)
Maroon In/Securities
This essay uses the concept of “Maroon in/securities” to refer to a number of creative practices of survival and a range of experiences and feelings that converge in the Maroon narrative. These two terms, when brought together, productively facilitate a dialogue between Maroon studies and security studies that might lead to keen interventions in both fields. The concept first allows us to talk about military praxis (and in particular, guerilla wa…
An Archive of Loose Leaves
This interview provides a rich account of Frank Birbalsingh's experiences from his early life in colonial British Guiana in the early part of the twentieth century to his continuing work as a literary scholar and critic in diaspora. What is also revealed is a thoughtful critical reflection on the Caribbean, its multiplicity, and its course of change over a lifetime. The discussion also traces Birbalsingh's migrations to India, Canada, New Zealand…
And the Disenchantment of Empire
This article contextualizes 1865 as a key moment in global history and in the world of the British Empire. Central to this discussion is a theorization of the concept of keydates, which is developed through a reconsideration of Raymond Williams' important cultural studies text Keywords. Taking 1865 as an important keydate, the authors examine how temporality as an organizing hermeneutic and as a site of study might function to reorient discussion…
"Between here and "not here: Queer desires and postcolonial longings in the writings of Dionne Brand and José Esteban Muñoz
This article examines the concepts of “not here” in Dionne Brand’s work and “not yet here” in José Esteban Muñoz’s work. These concepts are linked with queer desires, but also postcolonial longings and visions for other political and social possibilities. Both Brand’s and Muñoz’s writings rephrase and rearticulate various Third World social revolutions as part of their examination of queer possibilities, practices and narratives. Their work reins…
Promiscuous Archiving: Notes on the Joys of Curating Black Queer Legacies
On 5 June 2018, the ArQuives in Toronto (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives) hosted a public conversation between Ajamu and Courtnay McFarlane titled “Promiscuous Archiving: The Joys of Curating Queer Black Legacies.” The exchange published here is a follow-up to that public dialogue. It not only returns to some of the terms, gestures, narratives, and critical provocations of that previous discussion but also expands on several of tho…
Caribbean Literary Historiography and the Jamaican Literary 1950s
This essay utilizes an alternative politics of directionality as a way of reentering the mid-twentieth-century Caribbean literary archive. Rather than focusing on Windrush as the main orienting point, this discussion examines and regrounds what events and institutions in Jamaica might tell us about the literary 1950s. Beginning by rethinking the historiographical gaze toward London, the author then raises key questions about what the narrative of…
Ain't no black in the (Brexit) Union Jack? Race and empire in the era of Brexit and theWindrushscandal
This article examines Brexit and the Windrush scandal as twin manifestations of the border anxieties that have structured questions of belonging in contemporary Britain. It discusses Paul Gilroy's There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack and Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack as two texts which attend to questions of race and empire in the mid-20th century in relation to British national identity. Both Clarke and Gilroy situate …
Dialogues: Reviewing the Queer Caribbean
Born of a cross-journal collaboration between sx salon and Anthurium, this conversation engages book reviews of critical works within queer Caribbean scholarship
Protests and Pedagogy: The Legacies of Caribbean Student Resistance and the Sir George Williams Protest, Montreal 1969
Following two weeks of a peaceful sit-in protest, on February 11, 1969, the Montreal riot police stormed the Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) computer centre and assaulted and arrested nearly one hundred people. The students at Sir George had been protesting their experiences of discrimination and the university’s failure to take seriously their complaints about racism on campus. This discussion explores the significance of the 1969…
On Capture Land
Among the narratives recounted in Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return, is a story of Rastafari longing for return. This discussion considers that story, told to Brand by a friend, alongside Chronixx’s song “Capture Land” and Nabil Elderkin’s short film, “Captureland.” In reading these works together, I use the concept of “capture land” to engage with the question of the authority of maps. I also examine how these works narrate land, col…
Toward a Post-Apologetic University
This is a reflection on the uses of university apologies, prompted by the recent apology offered by Concordia University for its mishandling of Black students’ complaints of institutional racism in 1969, which culminated in the Sir George Williams University student protest, the largest protest against racism on a Canadian university campus
Prefigurings Remembered
This essay serves as an introduction to a suite of essays exploring the significance and resonance of Charles V. Carnegie's Postnationalism Prefigured (2002). The occasion for these reflections is the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the book. The authors' discussion examines the place of Carnegie's work in relation to questions of Caribbean intellectual genealogies. They locate him multiply: as a student of the 1960s generation and as…
Cultural Studies in a Time of War
“He Had a Sympathetic Understanding of Everybody”: Remembering Sam Selvon — a Conversation with Ramabai Espinet
In this interview the writer Ramabai Espinet converses with Nalini Mohabir and Ronald Cummings about her encounters with Samuel Selvon and with his writing across the years. Her memories range from her girlhood in San Fernando to memorial gatherings for Selvon in the diaspora. Through these accounts she maps an understanding of Selvon as part of his literary generation and traces his unique place in Trinidadian letters. What emerges is a deeply s…
Of Selvon and Sentimentality: Diasporic Rememberings
This essay serves as an introduction to the special issue on Samuel Selvon. It offers reflections on what it means to remember Selvon today one hundred years after his birth in 1923 and after his centenary in 2023. It also situates the discussions that make up the special issue in relation to each other and in relation to the wider critical field of scholarship on Selvon’s work
Sociology (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Caribbean history, culture, and politics (7 works) · Narrative (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Literature (6 works)