Finding the Field: Notes on Caribbean Cultural Criticism, Area Studies, and the Forms of Engagement

Reflecting on the methodology for the author's forthcoming book, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory, this essay argues for the importance of fieldwork in Caribbean literary and cultural studies and contributes to the development of a shared public discourse about fieldwork by articulating and refining the untheorized practices of fieldwork in the humanities. It situates literary fieldwork in relation to practices of literature, area studies, anthropology, and trauma studies.