The ACWWS’ Digital Archive is an open-access collection aimed at conserving the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS)’s institutional memory, recording the influence of the cross-cultural connection between scholars, writers, and artists of the Caribbean, and displaying the scholarly and creative works of the diverse, multi-layered, and storied Caribbean communities.
Due to the lack of support for women’s writing in the early period of Caribbean literature, and even today, with limited resources and academic labor for Caribbean communities, one of the benefits of preserving the Association’s archival knowledge is to demonstrate the importance of ACWWS in developing Caribbean women’s literary scholarship and communities in difficult conditions. The archival materials and testimonies gathered here tell the story of what spurs Caribbean women writers and scholars’ desires to fill gaps, assemble, and serve to keep the profession alive.
About
The ACWWS’ Digital Archive currently holds conferences and newsletter materials. The names, places, languages, and cultural exchanges showcased in these texts illuminate the coming together of Caribbean women writers and scholars from different areas and diverse backgrounds in a time when their intellectual and creative presence was marginalized. In highlighting the writers’ names and places in the ‘Subjects and Keywords’ section, we can start noticing Caribbean women writers and scholars’ interactions. Although the field of Caribbean literary studies has tussled with the inclusion of all the people, places, and cultures in the Caribbean, ACWWS’s involvement in conference work and service to the profession begins to explicitly present how these women transformed the field of Caribbean literary studies and sustain Caribbean regionalism and cross-cultural connections despite the many interpersonal, professional, and cultural challenges they faced.
These collections seek to encourage the public and scholarly members to perceive the Caribbean region as a vitally creative whole, with specific differences but with relational, reciprocal synergies that give unique meaning and shape to the Caribbean in a global context.
Additional collections are being curated and will be added to the website soon.