Caribbean Studies, Anthropology, and U.S. Academic Realignments∗

Framed around a set of questions, this article traces the scholarly, institutional, and geopolitical trajectories shaping the shifting locations of Caribbean Studies within U.S. cultural anthropology over time. Drawing in part on ideas developed through their collaborative project on Caribbeanist anthropologies, the authors argue that: (1) Caribbean Studies often has held a peripheral and liminal position within U.S. academic institutions, constructions of area studies, and anthropology, at the same time that concepts and categories from the sub-field have attracted and been used by scholars in other fields at different moments, (2) the foci, ‘‘objects’’ and categories engaged by U.S. anthropologists’ Caribbeanist research have been situated within American economic, political, and socio- cultural relations and projects with the region as well as within the U.S. over time, and (3) contemporary institutional structures and politics as well as new global technologies may shape possibilities for where Caribbean Studies is located institutionally as well as the sorts of Caribbeanist research projects and collaborations that U.S. scholars conduct. By way of conclusion, the authors propose possible institutional spaces (e.g., Africana Studies, Atlantic Studies) around which Caribbean Studies and Caribbeanist anthropologies may be most fruitfully situated.