TORONTO, January 19, 1996: York University is currently hosting Gordon Rohlehr, a renowned scholar of Caribbean literature and performance, and director of the Creative Arts Centre at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad.

Rohlehr is the author of many publications and broadcasts on the relationship between the expressive arts and the political and socio-economic dynamics of Caribbean culture. His recent books include: My Strangled City and Other Essays, The Shape of that Hurt and Other Essays, and Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad.

Rohlehr's residency at York, which runs to Jan. 27, includes guest lectures in the Departments of Dance, Music, English, Anthropology, Fine Arts Cultural Studies (FACS) and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He will speak on such topics as: "The Neocolonial Discourse and Strategies for Change;" "The Politics of Calypso and Performance in Trinidad;" "Brathwaite;" "Carnival and Calypso;" and "Carnival and Trinidadian Culture." He has already lectured on "Culture as Performance."

His visit to York was organized by FACS in conjunction with the university's Winters and Founders Colleges, as part of York's international exchange agreement with the University of the West Indies.

"This is part of the Faculty's continuing interest in international artistic expression and part of a long tradition of the Faculty bringing in the foremost artists from around the world," says Seth Feldman, dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Educated in Guyana, Jamaica, England and the United States, Rohlehr has taught on everything from West Indian literature and poetry to Caribbean culture. His published articles have dealt with a wide range of topics, from writers and apartheid to Jamaican music, from mindless architects and the treatment of women in calypso to calypso and social confrontation in Trinidad.

Rohlehr is available to talk to the media during his stay in Toronto.

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For more information or to arrange an interview, contact:

Brigitte Kleer
Faculty of Fine Arts
(416) 736-5136, ext.77143

or

Cindy Kleiman
Department of Communications
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
YU/004/96