Alissa Trotz is director of Caribbean Studies at New College, University of Toronto, and also teaches in the Women and Gender Studies Program.

Alissa Trotz is director of Caribbean Studies at New College, University of Toronto, and also teaches in the Women and Gender Studies Program.

One of her courses situates the contemporary Caribbean in a wider global context, and explores a range of issues: global trade policies as these affect Caribbean exports; the fact that the Caribbean has one of the highest food import bills in the world; migration and the formation of Caribbean communities in places like Toronto; the challenges of forging a Caribbean regional identity.

Her published work and research interests cover a number of topics: gender, race and the making of place in the Caribbean; making links between Caribbean Studies and Women and Gender Studies; transnational migration and Caribbean connections across the US-Canadian border; violence, memory and commemoration in the Caribbean.

For the last four years she has edited a weekly newspaper column, In the Diaspora, in a daily newspaper in Guyana. “For me, this column is as important as my contributions inside the university classroom, and a weekly deadline I have never missed, because it offers a space to make meaningful connections beyond the academy,” says Professor Trotz. The column, by raising questions each week that are about the Caribbean and Latin America, also makes a modest contribution to thinking about what we mean when we use the term Caribbean, a way of putting it into practice each week. Several of the pieces have been reproduced in newspapers in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados and St. Lucia, as well as in the Caribbean newspapers in Toronto.

“We often associate columns with individual persons who write them each week,” says Trotz. “This column is different; although I edit it, I have tried make this public space more accessible by encouraging articles from a wide variety of contributors that has included high school, undergraduate and graduate students, cultural producers (musicians, poets and artists), academics, public servants, international civil servants, journalists and activists, from across the Caribbean as well as North America and Europe, many of whom have never done anything like this before!”

Learn more:

• Caribbean Studies Program Website
• Admission Information and Program Overview
• Read Professor Trotz's column