Explosive Transformations: Cultural Resilience to Natural Hazard on St Vincent and Montserrat

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project responds directly to Strand 4: Cultural Heritages, Interpretation, and Representation and the Translating Cultures and Care for the Future themes in its examination of the ways in which response to and recovery from future volcanic events on the Eastern Caribbean islands of St Vincent and Montserrat is shaped by the cultural memory and narratives developed through past experiences. The project is interdisciplinary in its conception and design, bringing literary studies together with volcanology, international development, and project partners responsible for future emergency response on the islands, to allow for a thorough investigation of the ways in which resident populations have responded historically to severe natural threat, how crises have been dealt with, and recovery undertaken. In this way the project explores the extent to which knowledge of disaster translates between cultural and scientific experiences of volcanic risk and the extent to which cultural experience of past risk shapes future response by offering a comparative analysis of the literary record, oral traditions and histories, songs, and other artistic expressions, and working with local populations to gain an understanding of the place of the volcano in the cultural imaginary. The PI, Co-Is, and Project Researcher will work closely with the Project Partners, combining our different sets of knowledge and expertise, research methodologies and practices in order to examine the ways that literary studies can be conducive to new models of scientific, social, and political development. The project will combine literary scholarship to explore the place of the volcano in Caribbean literature and oral culture, archival research to search out evidence of experiences of past eruptions that are hidden from the official colonial records, focus-groups and interviews with local communities on both St Vincent and Montserrat as well as the islands' diasporas in the UK, and a three day workshop in the Eastern Caribbean bringing together the Project Investigators and Researcher, the Project Partners, and other invited stakeholders from literary scholars, writers and performers, artistic figures, archivists and publishing houses, and civil and community groups where we will discuss our findings and explore the ways in which they can be put to the most use for the communities affected by volcanic risk.