Colbert
I. Nepaulsingh
At age 8, on the island of Trinidad, I asked a question about
Bartolomé de las Casas. I wanted to know what kind of person he and
Christopher Columbus and other Spaniards were who came to the New World.
That question led me to study Medieval Spain, because the conquistadores were
medieval men. To study medieval Spain well meant studying medieval Europe,
because university curricula, correctly, did not then and do not now separate
Spain from the rest of Europe. University curricula should also include the
study of North Africa, at least, if not all of Africa, in the study of Spain,
because Spain is and always has been a Euroafrican bridge. But what I know
about Africa, I have had to teach myself. What I now know about Spain and
Europe and Africa has given me answers to the question I first asked at
age 8.
My training and research as a hispanomedievalist
have always been oriented towards an understanding of the islands of the
New World commonly called the Caribbean, a name I have rejected in my article
entitled “A New Name for the Islands”. I published three books and about
three dozen articles about Spanish literature and culture, and since my last
book about Spain, Apples of Gold in Filigrees of Silver: Jewish Writing in
the Eye of the Spanish Inquisition (1995), I have turned my publication efforts
entirely towards the New World Islands. First, I published a series
of esssays about the literature, history, and culture of the New World Islands
(on the difference between islands and continents, the continental fallacy
of race, Jamaica Kincaid, Toussaint Louverture, and so on) which I will
one day reissue as a book currently entitled Naming the New World Islands:
Essays at a New World. Meanwhile, I have co-authored, with Edward Baugh,
Derek Walcott: Another Life Fully Annotated, with a Critical Essay and Comprehensive
Notes (Lynne Rienner, 2004). Walcott’s masterpiece is such an encyclopedic
work that, although Professor Baugh (perhaps the world’s leading Walcott
scholar) and I had been working on it, independently, each for about thirty
years, we would not have been wise to attempt such an ambitious project alone.
For us, it was a labor of love, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the Nobel
Laureate for permitting us to use his text (and his unpublished papers) for
the benefit of the students and teachers who will use our annotated edition
and study of it.
Derek Walcott has been a painter all his life, and his masterpiece Another
Life is very much about painting. My current major projects include a book-length
study of the work of Trinidad artist Jackie Hinkson, whose work was exhibited
at the University at Albany, in 1998, alongside Walcott’s paintings, in a
show entitled “Island Light”. The working title for that book is Hinkson:
Heat, Light, and Color.
Professor Nepaulsingh was Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at
the University at Albany from June 1988 to August 1991 when he returned to
research and teaching as a Full Professor in the Department of Latin American
and Caribbean Studies. He has been at the University at Albany since 1972
and has served as Acting Director for the Center for the Arts and Humanities,
Chair of the Department of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and as Chair
of the President's Committee on Racial Concerns Across the Campus. Professor
Nepaulisngh has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research on
Hispanic literature. He is also a winner of the Chancellor's Award for Excellence
in Teaching, and of the University's Award for Excellence in Academic Service.