My name is René.

As a PhD candidate at Yale University, my academic research is about Caribbean literature in the 20th century. Specifically, I’ve been writing about the Caribbean Festival of the Arts (Carifesta), one of the most important cultural events in the region. I wrote an article about the first edition of the festival for the journal archipelagos.

Based on the results of my dissertation research, I’m building what I call the Carifesta Stories project. This will be a series of websites that feature interactive maps, timelines, oral histories, and other audiovisual content about Carifesta.

Check out my interactive Story Map for an in-depth look at the first Carifesta in 1972.

Another site, Women of Carifesta, focuses on the contributions of women to Carifesta over the years. This is my collaborative project with the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Finally, I’ve built a database to track archives around the world that contain Carifesta materials, which I mapped here.

On my blog you’ll find my updates about my projects. If I’m going to help steward these stories, accountability and transparency are indispensable.

My Linktree lists all my publications. Check out my resume here or my cv here.

Let’s chat! Find my email, LinkedIn, and GitHub below.