The Dublin Seminar, Caribbean Style!

It’s supposed to be spring by now, even in New England, but today’s rain is awfully chilly. All the more reason to think about the Caribbean! Here’s the announcement of this June’s Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife:

New England and the Caribbean is a two-day conference on New England’s involvement with the West Indies and the Caribbean basin in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

The conference opens with papers on American and Caribbean slavery practices and New Englanders’ roles in slave revolts and anti-colonial revolutions. It continues with an examination of extractive and provisioning trades (sugar, mahogany, and draft animals). Saturday evening sessions address maritime issues such as whale-hunting and piracy. The conference concludes on Sunday with lectures on New England business ventures, plantation ownership, the ice trade, and the decorative arts.

The Seminar is designed for educators, historians, collectors, dealers, authors, librarians, and museum curators; students and the general public are cordially invited to attend.

Here’s the complete program for the seminar, with registration information. Not every scholarly gathering includes “open-hearth chocolate making and tasting” in Historic Deerfield.