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Popular Culture and the Teaching of History: The Modern Caribbean History Course

Kirwin R. Shaffer
Penn State University—Berks/Lehigh Valley College

THE HISTORY TEACHER frequently struggles to find classroom sources that are not only insightful, but also challenge students to be interpretative and imaginative about the past. As an instructional tool, popular culture can do all of these while reflecting the cultural impulses emanating from a particular country or region. To this end, the Caribbean offers the history teacher ample movies, musical selections, novels, and short stories to help students explore various facets of Caribbean history. This article has two aims: first, to illustrate how teachers of Caribbean history can make popular culture central to unlocking the dynamics of the region's history; and, second, to think about strategies and dilemmas involved in using popular culture as "historical texts" in any history course, not just Caribbean history. 1
      I propose re-envisioning Caribbean history away from a more traditional focus on political and economic history and toward an approach that places Caribbean popular culture at the center of the course. In short, popular culture goes from being the window dressing that gives color and texture to history to actually being the window through which we see Caribbean history. Key to success in this project is incorporating large amounts of popular culture so that popular culture actually becomes the historical documentation that we use to unlock values, attitudes and interpretations of societies. Before describing my course I will discuss the pedagogical problems that led me to redesign my course, the definition of "popular culture" I use, and my understanding of the different ways popular culture can be used as historical text and the problems associated with such use. 2
      First, when teaching the history of Third World societies, it is easy to focus primarily on the political and economic dimensions of those societies, which can lead to focusing on the issue of imperialism, especially cultural imperialism.1 A cultural imperialist approach to Caribbean history focuses on the external factors influencing and dominating a society on which they are imposed. In this scenario, the Caribbean islands are conquered by Europeans, who in turn supplant native beliefs, institutions, languages, and norms. If the indigenous people die off, they are replaced by waves of forced and coerced laborers, Black, Chinese and Indian, who themselves are imposed on the land and made to become victims of European or North American rule. A cultural imperialist approach focuses mostly on a one-way domination of people living and working in the Caribbean, so that, while not openly acknowledged, the Caribbean becomes a poor, backward tropical Europe or North America. On a more sinister level, such an approach turns Caribbean peoples, whether indigenous or imported, into victims, unwilling or unable to affect and mold their own lives. It ignores the activities of average people who lived day-to-day, celebrated, and resisted, living their lives within the structures created by colonial and neo-colonial rule while even helping to shape that rule by what they said and did. 3
      Rather than this, what was created in fact was a hybrid society and culture which cannot be understood by discussing the Caribbean and seeing it as the standard structure of "imperialism" would dictate, as a region where imperial policies and economic decisions made in London, Paris, Washington or New York will be implemented; where the lands will be restructured by external design and for external benefit; and where multinational companies will flood fast food, soft drinks and music CDs, bringing in imported tastes and destroying everything local while exploiting the workers. 4
      A hybridization approach to Caribbean history recognizes the forces of imperial power at play in the region. However, hybridization is most concerned with showing how people in the islands have responded to imperialism over time. This is crucial for the historian for two reasons. First, cultural imperialist approaches tend to see culture as static. That is, there was or has been a traditional culture that existed in some never-evolving state. Then imperialism arrived and swept it away, supplanting it with everything from foreign languages, schools, political and economic systems to foreign attitudes, dances, music and lesser cultural knick-knacks. Hybridization recognizes that cultures are fluid and constantly evolve. It illustrates how people have sometimes adopted and constantly adapted "imperialist inputs" into their cultural practices. These in turn reflect and shape their local conditions. As history progresses, new inputs result in still newer adaptations so that a hybridization approach better reflects the historical realities of peoples, societies and cultures changing through the years. 5
      These are the reasons that led me to redesign my course to focus on the evolving hybrid cultures of the Caribbean. I saw it as a way to bring history (and even the history of imperialism!) to life. Focusing primarily on specific imperial laws, policies, and actions would have run the risk of students missing out on understanding a central issue of both historical and current importance: the process of globalization, how people responded to it in the past, and how that past can inform us about today's ratcheted up process of globalization. This approach illustrates and helps students think about this process of global spread, global dread, and global creations, permitting them to see that all the talk of economic and cultural globalization over the past decade is merely the latest chapter in a long process of peoples receiving outside inputs and adapting their responses and lives to them, thus creating something new. If we focus both on the outcomes of structural policies and how people responded to and adapted them for their own lives, we will bring imperialism and globalization to life while at the same time bringing to life average people who have lived, worked, played, danced and sung outside the halls of the government ministries and corporate boardrooms. 6
      Having decided to make the hybridization of cultures in the Caribbean the central thread of my course I had to decide on the best course materials to use. I decided to use evidences of popular culture. It is no secret that college-age students think of themselves as pretty well-versed in the nuances of popular culture. Utilizing popular culture from the region would therefore tap into an already existent student interest. Students might even know Bob Marley or salsa music or the fiction of a Caribbean author. However, most students tend to think of popular culture as entertainment. The task then would be to link popular culture to larger economic, political and social phenomenon. In short, I chose to use popular culture to explore the links between political developments and culture, to reflect economics and politics from the top down with responses and new initiatives from the bottom up. Because popular culture expresses the imaginations, interpretations and values of historical actors, a Caribbean history course could appropriately be filled with multiple examples of popular culture, including feature films, music, novels, short stories, and examples of sports and popular religious expression. These samples of popular culture become "historical documents" to be studied in the same way that a student might study acts manumitting slaves, official proclamations of independence, or famous political speeches. 7
      I next needed to define "popular culture." My conception of "popular culture" merged different authors' ideas on the subject. Jean Franco suggested that popular culture referred "both to what belongs to and what comes from the people."2 William Beezley and Linda A. Curcio-Nagy defined popular culture as a "set of images, practices, and interactions that distinguishes a community and often serves as a synonym for national identity," but which also "encapsulates the pleasure in everyday life."3 Jack Nachbert and Kevin Lause argued that "popular culture is what most people choose to do most of the time."4 In short, popular culture is the cultural expression rooted in the daily lives of a society. This also has had a noticeable political impact, as Ray Browne, one of the deans of popular culture studies, has noted when he points out that popular culture is not just popular entertainment but the whole array of everyday life. This implies an important socio-political ingredient for Browne, who argues that "popular culture is the democracy, democracy speaking and acting, the seedbed in which political and cultural qualities grow. Popular culture democratizes society and makes democracy truly democratic. It is the everyday world around us: the mass media, entertainments, diversions; it is our heroes, icons, rituals, everyday actions, psychology, politics, and religion—our total life picture."5 Considering all of these observations, I chose to think of popular culture broadly as those religious, artistic, athletic and political expressions arising from different segments of society, and thus reflecting a society's dominant culture as well as its diversity. 8
      Finally, I had to consider how popular culture sources can function as "historical documents" and how one should use these in a history course. If we are to understand the history of a place, then it seems sensible to understand not only the voices the elite—as often expressed in traditional political and economic history approaches—but also voices from the social and political margins. Thus, art, religious artifacts, folktales, songs, films, and other forms of popularly produced "documents" from a particular era become central sources to unlock the views, actions and perceptions from below. It might be argued that only examples of popular culture that were created in the time period being examined can be used. This obviously would limit most uses of popular culture to the modern era from which large enough quantities of popular culture are extant. However it is also possible to use aspects of popular culture that are produced in a later period but which treat earlier historical events and processes. With both the growth in production and popularity of movies as well as literary fiction in the last third of the twentieth century, there are a growing number of these types of resources. This is especially true, as I'll show, when looking at a region like the Caribbean. While this strand of popular culture may not come from the period being analyzed in the course, movies and stories do reflect how writers and directors envision their own histories through the lenses of contemporary reality. As a result, students can examine these types of popular culture as "texts" not only to see a more modern interpretation of the past, but also to see how that past, combined with contemporary experiences, has influenced regional portrayals of history. Consequently, by reading a modern historical novel or watching a modern historical film, students can examine history as well as see and hear how that history's descendants represent historical events to modern generations—representations that are themselves reflective of historical developments and influences as well as the creator's contemporary environment. 9
      However, one must be cautious when using popular culture, especially modern renditions of the past, as "historical documents." Exploring these problems and limitations can be an excellent learning and interpreting lesson for students. All documents are cultural creations. Political documents, laws and decrees regulating trade, manifestoes—these traditional historical sources must be read not only for what they say, but for the values and aspirations embedded beneath the words. Such sources reflect not only historical moments but also the cultures, class identities, and ideas of those who wrote them. Popular culture functions this way as well. Studying religious artifacts and worship practices brings out popular belief systems, which in turn may expose deeper social issues surrounding class, ethnicity, gender and race. Understanding the origins and popularity of sports likewise can illustrate how national identity or race is infused in the society at large. Thus, while political and economic approaches are important, a popular culture approach tends to shift the focus away from decision makers and more to the points of view of those affected by the actions of decision makers. 10
      But the real caution must be exercised when examining popular culture that can become polemical. At what point is the popular culture source "reflecting" a point of view and at what point is it "advocating" a specific interpretation? This is especially important when dealing with sources like popular music, or modern novels and movies that examine past events. Artists (musicians, directors, novelists) should not be held to the same standards as historians; they have artistic license to bend the truth. Students must be cautioned about reading a twentieth-century fictional account of, say, slave rebellions or nineteenth-century immigration, or watching a movie about labor strife before the era of the film. What students see is less a conveyance of perceptions and reactions from that time period than a modern interpretation and the viewpoint of the creator. Most likely the creator is using the historical event to say something about his or her society's current state. Consequently, this type of popular culture obviously operates differently than merely listening to a recording of slave songs or studying the cheap little novellas produced for workers at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, this should not lead one to discount these modern sources of popular culture. Rather these sources should be "unpacked" not only to help students understand how history has impacted the present but also to see how those in the present view history through the ever-changing lens of the "now." Historical perceptions are not only conveyed through the people who created and acted in the past but also by today's presenters of the past, thus adding yet another level to the concept of hybridization. 11
   

Course Structure

 
      Teaching and studying the history of a region as diverse as the Carib-bean is an organizational challenge to say the least. The revered Carib-bean intellectual historian Gordon K. Lewis once offered some perspective on the region's history that helps one gain some organizational control. While the region was colonized and populated by peoples from throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, certain historical consistencies exist throughout the Caribbean despite imperial and linguistic differences. As Lewis put it,
(t)he evolution of Caribbean society and culture have really been the evolution of three major constituent elements: 1. The growth of colonialism, once the overseas colonies had been established by the European colonizing powers. 2. The initiation and expansion of the slave and slavery system. 3. A distinctive Creole culture and Creole institutions based on the twin factors of race and color.6
 In essence, the forces of imperialism may have been different in the islands depending on whether they were British, French, Danish, Dutch, Spanish or later North American, but these were differences of degree, not kind. Thus, "all of the regional societies, however separated they are from each other, possess a common history. The leading fact of that history, in turn, has been an economic exploitation remarkably similar in all of its features."7		 12
      At first glance, Lewis seems to be supporting a cultural imperialist approach. All of the islands were shaped by a process of domination rooted in economic exploitation. Yet, Lewis' approach to the region's history is more complex and contributes to hybridization theory and the importance of popular culture: "As the economic exploitative systems of colonialism and imperialism created tension, antagonism, and violence, the masses invented their own mechanisms of survival, in part resistant, in part accommodating."8 Ultimately, this process of resistance, adaptation and adoption, seen in the popular culture of the region, has been a key ingredient and "a potent force in the struggle of dependent peoples to retain their separate identity."9 Thus, Lewis's thesis that common processes of domination, adaptation and resistance unite the history of such a diverse region will help students to create a general theoretical overview that they can carry with them throughout the course. 13
      After offering students this "difference in degree, similarity in kind" outline, the next task was to decide how to delve into the actual histories of the region. Two broad approaches may be considered. First, one could organize the course thematically. In such an approach, students would study slave societies, slave resistance, race and ethnicity, popular religious expression, music, sport, dictatorships, and revolutions in a comparative manner. While useful, I have discovered that such an emphasis on comparative analysis obscures the historical importance of examining change over time in different societies. For instance, students may examine religious culture and its popular expression in festivals, music, and politics in Jamaica (Rastafari), Haiti (Vodou) and Cuba (Santería). But this approach makes it difficult to locate these expressions of popular culture in the larger historical development of each of these countries. They just appear with little contextualization. 14
      A second and more historian-friendly approach is to divide the region along "linguistic" lines and examine one or two islands from each linguistic division. It is possible to argue that such an approach merely reinforces old imperial divisions and in some ways serves as a form of "academic imperialism" imposed on the region. Perhaps, but we cannot deny that such imperial divisions and their linguistic aftermath are real historical legacies in the region. After all, the point is not to deny imperialism and its legacy but to understand it in a more complete framework. This approach makes it possible to accomplish two goals. First, it makes it possible to better portray how popular culture has evolved in each island over 200 years, beginning with the birth of the modern Caribbean during the Haitian Revolution. Second, it makes it possible to show how various forms of popular culture came to reflect and impact each region's historical development, illustrating how popular culture was both a mirror of and a force in history. 15
      Within the study of each linguistic region, students focused on five central themes: 1) the culture of slavery, resistance and forced labor, 2) race and ethnicity, 3) popular religious expression, 4) resistance and social change, and 5) music and sport. These themes often interact. Students could begin with the Francophone Caribbean, move to examine the Anglophone islands and conclude with the Hispanic Caribbean. Within each section of the course, the history of the region is told through the five central themes as reflected by the popular culture of those islands. Halfway through the course, students began drawing connections to earlier segments and came to understand the historical evolution of the islands in a comparative framework. Thus, this approach benefited from a comparative analysis while maintaining a chronological flow. 16
   

A Unit for Teaching Modern Caribbean History with a Popular Culture Emphasis

 
      What follows is a unit module for teaching one section of the Modern Caribbean History course. It is designed to illustrate and explain how popular culture can be put at the center of a course to illustrate a country's history. A syllabus schedule that includes topics, readings and films for the entire course appears in Appendix I at the end of this article. 17
   

Hispanic Caribbean: Cuba

 
      By the time the class reaches the Hispanic Caribbean, they have seen how popular culture functions as an engaging approach to study the history of the Francophone and Anglophone islands. A focus on politics and economics is not lost, but becomes inter-related with popular culture. Students will also have discovered comparisons and contrasts between different countries that they then bring into a study of the Spanish-speaking islands. Due to time constraints, teachers need to decide which islands to include here—Cuba, the Dominican Republic and/or Puerto Rico. Because of the uniqueness of its socialist revolution and my own research interests, I primarily look at Cuba to illustrate what appears to be a very different historical trajectory from the other two regions. Yet, this difference is only a "difference in kind" in that the same processes of hybridization have shaped Cuba's history. 18
      Like the French and English colonies in the Caribbean, modern Cuban history is rooted in slavery. In fact, Cuban sugar production received its big boost after European planters fled the Haitian Revolution and went to Cuba. Students can see this in the famous Cuban film The Last Supper. The film portrays, in great historical detail, the slaves' living and working conditions, but at the heart of the film is a slave rebellion and the resulting attempt by an owner to capture and punish the rebellious slaves. Made in 1976 during the "good years" of economic growth in Cuba, The Last Supper reflects in important ways how the present can interpret the past for its own agenda. In fact, while both an indictment of slavery and praise for slave resistance, the film can readily be seen in the context of the Cuban Revolution's attempt to showcase Cuba's African culture (Cuba is an Afro-Latin country, according to Fidel Castro). Beyond that, the film is a metaphor for the Cuban Revolution's relationship with North American imperialism: sugar plantations and slavery "stand-in" for North American capitalism; the slave revolt and continued slave resistance, despite constant harassment and threat from the owner's henchmen, becomes the story of the Cuban Revolution's resistance to and survival against United States hostility. Because of the film's nature, students could watch it during their study of Cuban slavery or while studying the Cuban Revolution. In fact, one may show it early, and then highlight certain clips later. 19
      Slave rebellions continued well into the late nineteenth century when Spain committed itself to a gradual emancipation of slaves beginning in 1870 and concluding in 1886. During the late stages of slavery, Cubans fought two unsuccessful wars for independence against Spain. Not until the war of 1895–1898, however, was Cuba able to cast off Spanish rule, only to come under United States military and economic domination. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, North American cultural influences flooded the island, especially as a result of repeated United States military interventions (1898–1902, 1906–1909, 1912, and the 1920s). While students can learn about these important military-political interventions through traditional lecture and study of documents, they also can study them through popular culture. Everything from cars and food to music and movies arrived on the island. Tourism and widespread United States-based mafia rackets augmented this cultural influx, so that some began to see the island as almost an extension of the United States. Hollywood movie clips from the 1940s and 1950s illustrate how this Cuban playground was portrayed to an American consumer market and then also shown in Cuban cinemas. One popular example is the 1943 classic, Week-end in Havana, which even includes a cameo role by the legendary Latin music sensation Carmen Miranda, who, although Brazilian, plays the role of a "Cuban" nightclub singer. This facet of the film alone speaks volumes about how Hollywood and North American culture imagined Cuba and all Latins. 20
      With the emergence of a new revolutionary government in 1959, Unted States cultural and political domination of the island ended. Cuba embarked on a project to build socialism—a project that unfortunately made the island as dependent on the Soviet Union as it had been on the United States. Nevertheless, throughout the history of Soviet domination and American saber rattling after 1959, Cuban popular culture grew to reflect a certain independent, uniquely Cuban reality that can be seen in sports, music, film and fiction. Creating a revolutionary society entailed breaking with past social structures, altering perceptions of reality from a capitalist vision to a socialist one, and changing behaviors. To this end, the government instituted a series of land reform and educational measures especially designed to benefit places and people who had been denied these before the revolution: rural areas, blacks and women in particular. To facilitate these changes, land reform measures were initiated in 1959, a women's federation (the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas or FMC) was created in 1960, a literacy campaign began in 1961, the educational system expanded, and film increasingly was placed in service of the revolution as a form of education as well as entertainment. 21
      In fact, film became a leading form of revolutionary popular culture that reflected many of the larger changes at work in society. Because of the size and scope of the modern Cuban film industry, there is a cornucopia of possibilities for classroom use since so many of these films are available on video cassette. For instance, students can view parts of several 1960s movies, including the joint Soviet/Cuban production I Am Cuba, which tries to illustrate the last days of pre-revolutionary Cuba and the transition to the revolution. The landmark movie Memories of Underdevelopment chronicles the life of a middle-class man trying to make sense of Cuba in the early days of the revolution after his family and friends have left for Florida. This movie also includes interesting news-reel footage of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the trial of the invaders in 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, as well as portions of a speech by Castro. The comedy Death of a Bureaucrat by the famous director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, reflects the difficulties of creating socialism on the island due to the imposition of state bureaucracy at every corner. A hallmark film centering on revolution and women is Lucía. The film examines three historical women named Lucía: one in the 1890s during the war for independence, one in the 1930s during the 1933 revolution, and one in the 1960s. Because of the periodization, the movie can be successfully divided so that as students study each of these periods, they can view the corresponding section. Lucía's focus on women in the 1960s revolves around the arrival of a literacy campaign worker (reflecting that history) and the difficulties inherent in developing a revolutionary spirit of equality between the races and sexes (showing what the revolution hoped would occur). 22
      By the 1970s, the economy was doing well, and Cuba began to export revolution in the form of military advisers, troops and health care workers. Still, problems remained, and popular culture, especially film, was put to service in an effort to raise consciousness and alleviate various social problems. An excellent example revolves around issues of gender equality. The 1975 Family Code required, among other things, that men and women equally share child-raising and household chores. The law was an attempt to legislate away elements of machismo that the revolution had yet to purge. However, the law also recognized that although women were increasingly a part of the labor force, they were still expected to do all of the household chores. Male resentment or reluctance to share duties at home threatened to undermine a key element of socialist equality. The movies Portrait of Teresa and Up to a Certain Point again reflected the social reality of machismo while illustrating to audiences an important problem that had to be recognized and solved. In this sense, the theme of "resistance and social change" became a paramount concern in Cuban cinema. 23
      In the 1980s, the revolution experienced growing pains. A shortage of housing and a need to produce more food led to various conflicts. Free market reforms designed to improve food output created social inequalities and were cancelled in the mid-1980s in a period known as "rectification." Yet, perhaps the most important event reflecting growing crises in the revolution was the 1980 Mariel Boatlift in which 125,000 Cubans left for Florida. Documentary films from Cuban exiles poignantly illustrate the late-1970s up to Mariel. The Other Cuba shows the events leading to and resulting in the boatlift while Improper Conduct examines problems facing homosexuals and the resulting exodus of gays, many of whom had been jailed for "improper conduct" and thus supposedly counter-revolutionary behavior. 24
      The focus on gender and sexuality dilemmas in the 1970s and 1980s provides an excellent transition to an examination of Cuba in the 1990s after the collapse of Communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, Cuba's primary economic, military and political partners. Cuba's own economy collapsed in the 1990s as the country entered what the government euphemistically called the "Special Period." For the first time since 1959, Cubans' basic needs were not being met and a crisis situation unfolded. The government responded culturally and economically. On the culture front, a new cultural democracy erupted as the government shifted away from its discrimination against homosexuals and people openly espousing religious beliefs. The Fourth Cuban Communist Party conference in 1991 legalized party membership for openly religious people, resulting in an outpouring of previously reserved religious expression whether Catholic, Protestant or the Afro-Cuban Santería, the most widely practiced religion. At the same time key government officials, including Fidel, announced that discrimination against homosexuals was counterrevolutionary. Both developments are reflected in the internationally acclaimed movie Strawberry and Chocolate in which the hero is a gay, dissident, religious artist while the villain is the hard-line, atheistic Communist Party member. The issue of homosexuality is also increasingly addressed in the sudden outpouring of Cuban fiction, especially by women, around homosexual themes. For this latter point, students can read short stories from Cubana: Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women.10 Other trials and tribulations of the Special Period, complicated by bureaucratic centralized planning, are wonderfully explored in the movie Guantanamera, the comedic "sequel" to Death of a Bureaucrat. The movie explores the problems of getting a corpse from one end of the island to the other for burial, while the realities of fuel shortages, lack of food, the growing dollarization of the economy (in which the United States dollar is the most valued currency), and bureaucratic inefficiency are illustrated against the backdrop of a Santería legend. In a less comedic fashion, recent Cuban fiction has illustrated the difficulties of Special Period-era Cuba, including Alejandro Hernández Díaz's The Cuban Mile, stories in Cubana, the noir fiction of Arnaldo Correa, Daniel Chavarría and José LaTour, and the controversial nihilistic novel Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez.11 Finally, one can listen to the music of newer hip-hop, rock and rap bands from Cuba like SBS, Moneda Dura, and Orishas. These groups blend foreign-originated musical styles with Cuban instruments and lyrics full of contemporary social commentary about issues arising during the Special Period, and thus reflecting the hybrid nature of modern Cuban history. 25
      Meanwhile, Cuban sport is another venue through which to explore and illustrate the history of Cuba, especially after 1959. Since the 1970s, Cuba's international teams have earned wide respect in various sports like boxing, volleyball, track and field, and of course, baseball. This success reflects larger developments in Cuban revolutionary society in which sports have been seen in two ways. First, the government emphasized widespread participation in sports as a means to (1) encourage development of a healthy population to coincide with increased health care from the state and (2) "democratize" sports so that people of all races, classes and genders had access to recreation and leisure activities that before the revolution had largely been the province of the middle and upper classes. Second, widespread popular participation allowed the government-run sports federation to identify early those youngsters with particular athletic gifts. Through a combination of training programs and sports institutes, the government could find and mold the best players to compete on its international squads. As a result, Cuban teams and individuals began winning international competitions and thus showcasing the successes of the Cuban revolution for an international audience, especially the consistently antagonistic United States. At the same time, international success was celebrated in Cuba and used by the state to develop a spirit of Cuban pride and nationalism linked to the Revolution. Thus sport, especially the Cuban Olympic baseball team, became another popular culture example through which to analyze Cuban history. 26
   

Conclusion

 
      Over the course of this article, I have illustrated how hybridization theory and a popular culture approach are useful in teaching Caribbean history. Colleges and universities in the United States increasingly are recognizing the importance of the Caribbean and incorporating Carib-bean Studies into the classroom as evidenced by the plethora of Latin American history job searches with a Caribbean emphasis over the past decade. This is particularly true along the East Coast where the majority of Caribbean migrants have settled. Because of these large Caribbean immigrant communities, it is hoped that high schools also will begin to incorporate more Caribbean history into their social studies curricula. Teachers and professors wishing to incorporate aspects of Caribbean history into other courses could easily adapt parts of this course to fit their own needs, whether it is a Latin American history course, a world history course, or perhaps a history of the British or French Empire. In any of these, a teacher could pull out a relevant segment and apply it to their course. Just as important, though, I hope that teachers will experiment with making popular culture central to any history course. The key is to retain the "bottom-up" approach that makes people and popular culture, not politicians or imperial regulations, the central focus and the best way to do this is to incorporate as many "hands-on" examples as possible. 27
      Most people throughout history interact infrequently with lawmakers and policy makers. This is not to say that these latter functionaries are unimportant. Certainly their roles in history have provided frameworks within which people acted, and in certain instances, especially during slavery and its aftermath, these functionaries and their decentralized agents on the plantations explicitly restricted peoples' lives. However, just as educators today aspire to turn students into active learners within the frameworks that we create, so too can we approach history by making the popular classes our subjects of study. While one must be cautious and thoughtful when using popular culture in a history course, I have found that doing so is an effective way to engage students. After all, popular culture is the history of all of us, and, because it is what "most people choose to do most of the time," it is the people's history. 28


Appendix I

Syllabus Schedule for Modern Caribbean History, 1789–2000

Introduction

Week 1
M Introduction to the Course: Cultural Imperialism and Hybridization
W Overview of Caribbean Physical and Cultural Geography
—Begin Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of This World
F Birth of the Modern Caribbean: The Haitian Revolution
—Continue The Kingdom of This World

Francophone Caribbean

Week 2
M Post-Revolutionary Haiti to 1915
—Continue The Kingdom of This World
W Post-Slavery Conditions in Martinique and Guadeloupe
—Continue The Kingdom of This World
F DISCUSSION over The Kingdom of This World


Week 3
M Movie: Sugar Cane Alley
W Continue Sugar Cane Alley
F Conclude Sugar Cane Alley with a DISCUSSION of the movie


Week 4
M US Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934
—Begin Selections on "Language and Literature" in Libète: A Haiti Anthology
W Noirisme, Négritude, and the Search for Cultural Identity
—Continue "Language and Literature" readings
F From Papa Doc to Baby Doc: The Duvalier Dynasty in Haiti
—Continue "Language and Literature" readings


Week 5
M Cultural Politics of Vodou
—Film: The Divine Horsemen
—Continue "Language and Literature" readings
W "Freedom Culture," the Fall of Baby Doc, and the Arrival of Aristide
—Film: Haiti: Killing the Dream
—Conclude "Language and Literature" readings
F UNIT DISCUSSION: Essays are due.

Anglophone Caribbean: Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica

Week 6
M Slave Rebellions and Emancipation
—Begin Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance
W Post-Slavery Labor: Asian and East Indian Immigration
—Continue The Dragon Can't Dance
F Labor Emigration at the Turn of the Century: Panama and Cuba
—Continue The Dragon Can't Dance


Week 7
M Trinidad and Tobago: Eric Williams and Independence, 1950s–60s
—Continue The Dragon Can't Dance
W Trinidad and Tobago: Music, Political Culture and Identity in Calypso, Soca, and Chutney Soca
—Continue The Dragon Can't Dance
F Trinidad and Tobago: Carnival, Politics and Economic Transformation, 1960s–1990s
—Conclude The Dragon Can't Dance


Week 8
M DISCUSSION centering on The Dragon Can't Dance
W Jamaica: Marcus Garvey, Black Consciousness and the Rastafarians
—Selection from George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin
F Jamaica: Cultural Politics and Resistance in Reggae Music
—Films: Bob Marley: Time Will Tell and Stepping Razor, Red X: The Peter Tosh Story
—Continue In the Castle of My Skin selection


Week 9
M Movie: The Harder They Come
—Selection from Orlando Patterson's The Children of Sisyphus
W Continue The Harder They Come
—Continue The Children of Sisyphus selection
F Conclude The Harder They Come with a DISCUSSION of the movie


Week 10
M US-Anglophone Caribbean Relations in the Cold War: Jamaican Democratic Socialism and the Grenadian Revolution
W Sport and the Search for Regional Identity: West Indian Cricket
F UNIT DISCUSSION: Essays are due.

Hispanic Caribbean: Cuba

Week 11
M Cuba's Wars for Independence and the Abolition of Slavery
—Films: The Last Supper and Lucía
W Popular Culture and Resistance: Cuban Opera and Baseball
—Film: Greener Grass: Cuba, Baseball and the United States
F US-Cuban Relations in the Early Twentieth Century


Week 12
M Music, Movies and Tourist Cuba: 1920s–1950s
—Film: Week-end in Havana
—Begin selections from Cubana: Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women
W The Cuban Revolution, 1953–1959
—Films: Portrait of Castro's Cuba and I Am Cuba
—Continue Cubana selections
F Expanding the Revolution; Beating Back the US
—Films: Memories of Underdevelopment and Lucía
—Continue Cubana selections


Week 13
M Cultural Politics and Creating the New Socialist Man: Music and Film
—Films: Death of a Bureaucrat, Portrait of Teresa, and Up to a Certain Point
—Continue Cubana selections
W Cultural Politics and Showcasing the Revolution: Sports
—Film: Greener Grass: Cuba, Baseball and the United States
—Continue Cubana selections
F Growing Pains, Exodus and Repression: 1970s–1980s
—Films: The Other Cuba, Improper Conduct, and Strawberry and Chocolate
—Conclude Cubana selections


Week 14
M The "Special Period:" Tourism and the Salvaging of the Revolution
—Begin Alejandro Hernández Díaz's The Cuban Mile
W Popular Religion and the Revolution during the Special Period: Santería
—Film: Clips of Santería ceremonies
—Continue The Cuban Mile
F Movie: Guantanamera
—Conclude The Cuban Mile


Week 15
M Continue Guantanamera
W Conclude Guantanamera with a DISCUSSION of the movie
F UNIT DISCUSSION: Essays are due.

Notes on Assignments: Comprehensive essays are assigned for each unit, due on the Unit Discussion day at which time students use their essays as the basis for the unit's formal concluding discussion. Periodic small-group assignments and student presentations are also peppered throughout the semester, though not reflected on this syllabus. A comprehensive final examination rounds out the course.

Appendix II

A Select Bibliography of Caribbean Popular Culture for Classroom Use

Music

When it comes to musical sources for this course, there is no shortage of options. One would do well to consult The Rough Guide to World Music: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific (Rough Guide Reference Series), Simon Broughton, ed. Rough Guides, Second Edition (2000). Below is what I consider both a useful and core list of samples.


Francophone Caribbean:
Boukman Eksperyans. Kalfou Danjere/Dangerous Crossroads. Mango Records, 1992.
Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Musics of Haitian Vodou, compilation. SmithsonianFolkways, 1995.
Zouk: World Music in the West Indies, compilation. Included in book by the same name, University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Zouk Attack, compilation. Rounder Records, 1992.


Anglophone Caribbean:
Bob Marley and the Wailers. Live. Island Records, 1975.
Burning Spear. Chant Down Babylon: The Island Anthology. Island Records, 1996.
Calypso & Soca (Rough Guides), compilation. World Music Network, 1999.
Churchical Chants of the Nyabingi, compilation. Poli-Rhythm, Ltd., 1997.
Drums of Defiance: Jamaican Maroon Music, compilation. Smithsonian Folkways, 1992.
Dub Chill Out, compilation. Creole Records, 1996.
The Harder They Come, soundtrack. Mango Records, 1972.
Hot and Spicy Chutney, compilation. Music Collection International, 1998.
Mutabaruka. The Ultimate Collection. Shanachie Entertainment, 1996.
Pure Reggae, compilation. PolyGram Records, 1998.
Steelbands of Trinidad & Tobago (Caribbean Carnival Series), compilation. Delos International, 1987.
Tosh, Peter. Equal Rights. Columbia Records, 1977.


Hispanic Caribbean (Note that this is heavy on Cuba, reflecting the course's focus):
Buena Vista Social Club (self-titled debut). World Circuit Production, 1997.
A Carnival of Cuban Music (Routes of Rhythm, Volume 1), compilation. Rounder Records, 1990.
Cuban Dance Party (Routes of Rhythm, Volume 2), compilation. Rounder Records, 1990.
¡Diablo al infierno! (Cuba Classics 3: New Directions in Cuban Music), compilation. Luaka Bop, 1992.
Irakere. Grandes momentos de Irakere. EGREM, 1992.
Los Van Van. Songo. Island Records, 1988.
Merengue and Bachata (Rough Guides), compilation. World Music Network, 2001.
Moneda Dura. Cuando duerme la Habana. EGREM, 1999.
Orishas. A lo cubano. Universal/Surco Records, 2000.
S.B.S. Sigue al líder. Fonovisa, 1999.

Literature

For such a comparatively small part of the world geographically, the Caribbean has produced a remarkable number of world-renown authors of fiction and poetry. The following are but a handful of the better known, most of whom can still be found in print:


Francophone Caribbean
Aimé Cesaire, Marysé Condé, and Edwidge Danticat.


Anglophone Caribbean
Kamau Brathwaite, Michelle Cliff, Merle Hodge, George Lamming, Earl Lovelace, Orlando Patterson, and V.S. Naipaul.


Hispanic Caribbean
Julia Alvarez , Alejo Carpentier, Alejandro Hernández Díaz, Cristina García, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, José Latour, and Zoe Valdés. (Note that all but Alvarez live in or are from Cuba, writing primarily in the post-revolutionary era). Collections of short stories of modern Cuban fiction have increased in popularity. A particularly useful book is Cubana, a collection of short stories by Cuban women.

Feature Films

Caribbean cinema has been dominated by Cuba, while a sizeable film industry has developed in Jamaica. Feature films listed in the syllabus particularly illustrate historic, political and/or social issues important to the islands in which they were filmed. Most of these remain available through distributors like Facets and New Yorker. Browsing the Internet Movie Data Base (www.imdb.com) will provide the curious with specific data on the films as well as distributors.


Notes

1. See this author's chapter "Drums of Resistance: Cultural Imperialism, Hybridization and Caribbean Popular Culture in the Classroom" in Danny Anderson and Jill Kuhnheim, eds., Cultural Studies in the Curriculum: Teaching Latin America. Modern Language Association (October 2003).

2. Jean Franco. "What's in a Name? Popular Culture Theories and Their Limitations." Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, vol. 1 (1982), 6.

3.Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction. William H. Beezley and Linda A. Curcio-Nagy, eds. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources (2000), xi.

4.Popular Culture: An Introductory Text. Jack Nachbert and Kevin Lause, eds. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press (1992), 35.

5. Ray B. Browne. "The Voice of Popular Culture in History." Perspectives, American Historical Association Newsletter 35/5 (May/June 1997), 26.

6. Gordon K. Lewis. Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in Its Ideological Aspects, 1492–1900. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press (1983), 10.

7. Ibid., 13.

8. Ibid., 20.

9. Ibid., 22.

10.Cubana: Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women. Mirta Yáñez, ed. Translated by Dick Cluster and Cindy Schuster. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

11. Alejandro Hernández Díaz. The Cuban Mile. Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1998; Arnaldo Correa. Spy's Fate. New York: Akashic Books, 2002; Daniel Chavarría. Adios Muchachos. New York: Akashic Books, 2001. José LaTour. Outcast. New York: Harper Perenniel, 2002; and, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Dirty Havana Trilogy. New York: Ecco Press, 2002.

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