Goa: A Postcolonial Society between Cultures. International Conference at Yale University, April 5-6, 2013.
This conference was made possible through support from the MacMillan Center, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education to the Council on Latin American & Iberian Studies, and the South Asian Studies Council at Yale University. The conference was organized by Kenneth David Jackson, professor of Portuguese at Yale University, specializing in Portuguese and Brazilian literatures, modernist movements in literature and other arts, and Asian culture dealing with poetry, music, and ethnography. He conducted research in India under the American Institute of Indian Studies, and he was also a researcher at the Xavier Centre for Historical Research in Goa, and published in the Bulletin of the Instituto Menezes Braganza. The scope and breath of the conference was extensive with discussion on such varied subjects as: Goa between Cultures, Portuguese colonial history and the impact of the Catholic Church on the Electorate, Goan Arts, Religion and Diaspora, Major Immigrant Writers in the Diaspora, and a stimulating discussion on The Goan Novel. A concert at Dwight Chapel, Old Campus, on the Music of Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674) and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (1580-1651) performed by Victor Coelho, on the theorbo and Robert Crowe, male soprano was the highlight of the evening. The participants in the Conference included: Rochelle Almeida, Cristiana Bastos, Victor Coelho, Ashley D' Mello, Dr. Antonio Gomes, Kenneth David Jackson, Margaret Mascarenhas, Bob Newman, Neeta Omprakash, André de Quadros, Gita Rajan, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro and Filipa Lowndes Vicente. Interesting papers were presented by students from Yale: Johns Webb Graham III on Pepper, Padroado, and Prester John: Portuguese-St.Thomas Christian Relations and the Creation of an Imperial Saint, 1500-1653; by Konrad Coutinho on The Goan Diaspora, and by Tara Menon on a critical analysis of the novel 'Os Brahamanes' (1866) by Francisco Luis Gomes. Needless to say, the conference besides being an intellectual exercise in the dissemination of knowledge of Goan history and culture, went a long way in preserving for posterity the complexity and the richness of the Indo-Portuguese culture of Goa. --Reported for Goanet by Dr. Anthony (Antonio) Gomes.
