Patricia Mohammed
The revolutionary act of imprinting gender into Caribbean thought is celebrated by Patricia Mohammed as she brings together decades worth of her critical essays that have influenced directions in feminism and in social thinking. A primary player in an ever-evolving Caribbean gender discourse for over four decades, Mohammed has produced an interdisciplinary manifesto that establishes founding moments and ongoing debates in gender and feminist theory; she marks out thematic shifts in academia and activism, including the area of masculinity, that inform feminist political strategy in the region.
Juxtaposing theoretical ideas with empirical flows of data, her strategic arrangement of this collection allows the reader to see the past and future as synonymous happenings, as temporal movements that rely on each other. Demonstrating a disciplinary promiscuity that is the cornerstone of her gender scholarship, the essays move between historical, biographical, popular culture and visual lens, revealing an intersectional analysis that is central to understanding of this region and to the current global condition.
Writing Gender into the Caribbean: Selected Essays from 1988-2020, establishes a chronology that is faithful to the evolving theoretical concepts and ideas in the field of gender and development studies, while demonstrating that collaborative affinities across shared yet different histories remain the backbone of the ongoing feminist project of reconstructing knowledge. In the face of narratives that cast shadows on the value of evolutionary progress, Mohammed encourages us to take pause and recognise how far gender scholars and feminists have come in leaving the world more gender equitable than we found it.
"Spanning four decades this collection takes us on a journey of exploration whose compass is feminist thought, and whose goal is a better understanding of the centrality of gender roles and relations in Caribbean society. Interdisciplinary perspectives, from history to sociology to art criticism, intersect in these essays, and diverse sources of inspiration, from song to film to oral traditions, inspire Mohammed’s analyses of gender politics and the imaginaries that represent them. This assemblage offers us an important and exciting intellectual history by one of the region’s foremost scholar-activists." Aisha Khan, Professor of Anthropology, New York University
"Mohammed has produced a powerful analysis of Anglo-Caribbean feminist thinking drawing on four decades of feminist activism and scholarship. Selecting from her published and unpublished essays over the years, this book highlights the importance of revisiting past scholarship, demonstrating how rethinking past work is important for all of us who struggle with new and old thoughts as we continue contributing to future gender scholarship, debate and policy-making." Jane Parpart, Professor, Global Governance and Human Security, University of Massachusetts, Boston
- 228 x 152 mm
- 720 pages
- Paperback
PATRICIA MOHAMMED is Emerita Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, a key thinker in Caribbean feminist theory, founding member (1978) of the Concerned Women for Progress, the first second wave feminist organisation in Trinidad and served as Coordinator of the First Rape Crisis Centre in this society from 1985. She is the primary architect of four National Gender Policies on Gender Equality and Equity and one of the pioneers in the development of gender studies at tertiary level in the Anglophone Caribbean.
Mohammed served as first Head of the Mona Campus Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS), UWI, Jamaica, before returning to UWI, Augustine, Trinidad, ending her academic career there as this university’s first appointed Director of Graduate Studies and Research.
Her international exposure includes Visiting Professor at State University of New York at Albany in 2007, and short fellowships or teaching stints at the University of Namibia, Windhoek; Emory University, Atlanta; the University of California, Berkeley; Rutgers University, New Jersey; and Warwick University, United Kingdom.
Among her publications, Gender in Caribbean Development (Ed), 1988, Rethinking Caribbean Difference (Ed), Feminist Review, Routledge Journals, 1998, and Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad, 1917 – 1947, Palgrave UK and The Hague, 2001, remain core contributions in gender. Imaging the Caribbean: Culture and Visual Translation, Macmillan UK, 2009 and a series of documentary films, including the award-winning Coolie Pink and Green (2009) and City on a Hill (2015) added a cultural studies lens of filmmaking and visual iconography to her competencies.
