The Caribbean is one of the world's most historically consequential and intellectually rich regions. Yet Yale undergraduates currently have no formal academic pathway that allows them to study the Caribbean as an interconnected region across disciplines.

We are students, faculty, alumni, and members of the broader Yale community who support the development of an undergraduate Certificate in Caribbean Studies: Archipelagos, Seas, and Diasporas.

This statement is intended first and foremost to demonstrate student interest. We believe Yale students should have the opportunity to pursue sustained study of the Caribbean, whether Caribbean Studies is central to their major, complements another field of study, reflects their personal or familial connections to the region, or simply represents an area of intellectual curiosity they want the opportunity to explore.

Why Caribbean Studies?

Caribbean Studies is inherently interdisciplinary: the Caribbean has everything from history, literature, political economy, ethnicity and race, migration, environmental science, ecology, public health, science and medicine, anthropology, music, art, language, religion, and other fields. Questions about hurricanes and climate change intersect with histories of plantation agriculture and land use. Questions about medicine and public health intersect with migration, empire, environment, and inequality. Literature, music, religion, and visual culture illuminate histories that cannot be understood through political or economic analysis alone.

A Caribbean Studies certificate would give students a framework for making connections across these fields rather than encountering the Caribbean only in individual courses scattered throughout the University.

The Caribbean is both a geographic region and a diasporic space. Its societies are connected by the sea, by histories and influence of the African diaspora, slavery, emancipation, and its cultural and intellectual by-product. At the same time, the region has been shaped by migration and communities from South Asia, East Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.

The Spanish-speaking Caribbean belongs to both the Caribbean and Latin America, Latin American and Latino Studies offer ways of understanding histories formed through colonialism, migration, race, language, and national identity. Caribbean Studies provides a distinct, complementary component: a framework around an interconnected region, its islands and continental shores, its seas, and its global diasporas.

Building on what already exists at Yale

Faculty already teach and conduct research relevant to the Caribbean across numerous areas of the University, and Yale's libraries and collections contain substantial resources for Caribbean research. Students can already encounter the region through courses in Black Studies, History, Ethnicity, Race & Migration, languages and literatures, environmental studies, History of Science and Medicine, anthropology, the arts, and more.

However, there’s a lack of an undergraduate academic pathway that allows them to bring these opportunities together into a coherent course of study.

We therefore envision a certificate that draws primarily from courses Yale already offers while encouraging new connections among faculty, departments, research centers, collections, and students.

Our vision

We envision Caribbean Studies: Archipelagos, Seas, and Diasporas as an interdisciplinary undergraduate certificate housed in Black Studies.

We hope its development can involve collaboration with the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM), Ethnicity, Race & Migration (ER&M), and other interested departments, programs, schools, faculty, and research centers across Yale.

We imagine a curriculum broad enough for students to approach the Caribbean through several interconnected areas of inquiry, including:

• History, race, ethnicity, and diaspora, including slavery, emancipation, colonialism, migration, Indigenous histories, Black Atlantic intellectual traditions, and the formation of Caribbean peoples and identities;

• Environment, ecology, and climate, including hurricanes, coastal systems, biodiversity, agriculture, energy, environmental justice, and the Caribbean's particular vulnerability and importance in the study of global climate change;

• Science, medicine, and public health, including histories of medicine and experimentation, epidemiology, health disparities, environmental health, and scientific knowledge produced in and through the Caribbean;

• Culture, language, and artistic production, including literature, music, visual art, theater, religion, architecture, and the region's extraordinary linguistic diversity;

• Political economy, migration, and transnational life, including labor, development, tourism, sovereignty, trade, diaspora, and relationships among Caribbean societies and the wider Americas, Africa, Europe, and the world.

The final structure comes from collaboration among faculty, students, and appropriate academic bodies.

Why we are signing

Signing this statement does not mean that Caribbean Studies must be your major field, that you identify as Caribbean, or that you would necessarily complete the certificate yourself.

It means that you believe Yale students should have the opportunity to pursue this field of study.

A university should make it possible for students to follow serious intellectual interests that cross the boundaries of existing majors and departments. For some students, a Caribbean Studies certificate would provide the foundation for future scholarship or professional work. For others, it might complement their study in environmental science, medicine, history, literature, anthropology, Black Studies, Latin American Studies, ER&M, political science, music, or another discipline entirely.

And for many students, it may simply offer the chance to study a region they believe matters.

Our goal is to demonstrate that there is a broad constituency for that opportunity and to work constructively with faculty and administrators to determine how a Caribbean Studies certificate can become academically rigorous, institutionally sustainable, and genuinely interdisciplinary.

By signing, I support continued faculty and student work toward establishing an undergraduate Certificate in Caribbean Studies at Yale and affirm that Caribbean Studies deserves a visible, interdisciplinary pathway within the Yale College curriculum.

You can read the full proposal here: Yale Caribbean Certificate Proposal & complete survey here: Course History and Interest

Who we are

Despierta Boricua, the Dominican Students Association, the Cuban American Undergraduate Student Association, the Caribbean Students Organization, the Haitian Students Association — with the support of CENTRO (Hunter/CUNY), the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, the CUNY Haitian Studies Institute, UConn's Puerto Rican Studies Initiative, and the Rutgers Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration.