Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Lecturer
Phd 2011 (Geography) UC-Berkeley; BA 2002 (Literature; Ethnicity, Race, & Migration) Yale University
Regional focus: The Americas, the Caribbean, Cities

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose work focuses on how human difference is thought about and acted on in the world. Taking in analyses of music, books, sport, and film, his research is based in the principle that culture and media play a constitutive role in our societies' political life. A specialist on race and the Caribbean, he has lived and worked for extended periods in Cuba and Trinidad, and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council. His essays on arts and history have appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York, Harper's, the Believer, the Nation, Foreign Policy, American Quarterly, and Transition, among other publications. In 2011, he completed his PhD in geography at Berkeley, where his doctoral thesis was awarded that year's Best Dissertation Prize from the Caribbean Studies Association.

Selected publications

BOOKS

Island People:
The Caribbean and the World
[under contract with A.A. Knopf]

Unfathomable City:
A New Orleans Atlas
(Editor-at-large, with Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker)
[under contract with University of California Press]

ANTHOLOGIES/INTRODUCTIONS

"Introduction" [pdf] to 
The Traveler's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands
by Patrick Leigh Fermor
(New York Review Classics, 2011)

"Shipyards and Sounds"
in Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
Rebecca Solnit, ed. (University of California Press, 2010)

“’Are We All Creoles Now?’:
Ethnicity and Nation in a Heterogeneous Caribbean Diaspora”
in Ethnicity, Class and Nationalism: Caribbean and Extra-Caribbean Dimensions,
Anton Allahar, ed. (Lexington Books, 2005)

ESSAYS/INTERVIEWS

"Caribbean: Crossroads of the World"[pdf]
Artforum
November 2012

"All Over the Map" [pdf]
Harper's
September 2012

"Different Folk:
The Discreet Charm of Kate and Anna McGarrigle" [pdf]
American Quarterly
64:2 (June 2012)

"Music and Violence"
(on Marley and the Wailers)
Los Angeles Review of Books
June 13, 2012

"In Context:
A Conversation with Peter Doig, artist"[pdf]
The Believer film issue
March 2012

"Back in the Day-O:
Questions for Harry Belafonte"
New York
October 17, 2011

"Letter from Trinidad (Beyoncé is Gold)"
Los Angeles Review of Books>
May 27, 2011