CENTER FOR “RACE,” CULTURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
2025 Faculty Summer Research Grant Recipient Public Lecture
Disenchanting Disenchantment: Experimentation and the Poetics of Underdevelopment
Featuring Annabelle Haynes, PhD
Assistant Professor of English, Hofstra University
This presentation focuses on the beginning stages of researching a new chapter for her book project, Cartographies of Expropriation: Island Imaginaries and the Poetics of Underdevelopment. It argues that island representations in Caribbean women’s artivist texts stage complex relationships between artistic experimentation and development discourse. The chapter focuses on the fledgling Jamaican community theatre group Sistren Theatre Collective, which has been using the performing arts as a tool to address violence against women, labor issues, and children’s rights issues since 1977. “Experimentation and the Poetics of Underdevelopment” investigates how Sistren Theatre Collective has had to transfer their experimental approach to theater to sustaining their operations in the face of a shrinking funding landscape and polarized geopolitical environment.
Dr. Annabelle Haynes’ research analyzes the confluence of postcolonial development discourse and literary experimentation with special attention to works by Caribbean women writers.
Thursday, November 20, 2025 • 4:20-5:45 p.m.
Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus
For more information, call 516-463-6585 or email raceculturesocialjustice@hofstra.edu.