“Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean” to be next KWAHS Distinguished Speaker Series Program

“Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean” to be next KWAHS Distinguished Speaker Series Program

March 6, 2023 – (Key West, FL).  The Key West Art & Historical Society invites the community to attend a free lecture by Dr. Sharika Crawford titled, “The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Labor, Conservation and Boundary Making from the Cayman Island to Key West.”  The lecture will be held at Tropic Cinema, 416 Eaton Street, on Friday, March 17, beginning at 6:00 p.m.  The program is free of charge, but advance registration is required to ensure seating.  To register online visit www.kwahs.org/dss-crawford.

In her talk, Dr. Crawford will discuss the entangled histories of peoples and commodities that circulated across the greater Caribbean, which connected places like Key West to the Cayman Islands and further south toward Nicaragua and Costa Rica.  The story of the humble turtle and its hunter, Crawford argues, came to play a significant role in shaping the maritime boundaries of the modern Caribbean.  Focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she traces and connects the expansion of turtle hunting to matters of race, labor, political, and economic change, and the natural environment.

Crawford is associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.  Her scholarship focuses on Latin America, the circum-Caribbean, and the West African nation of Ghana.  Recently, her book “The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean: Labor, Conservation, and Boundary Making” was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020.

This program is free and is limited to 150 attendees; registration is required kwahs.org/dss-crawford.  Support for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Additional support was provided by the Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture and the State of Florida, The Helmerich Trust, Aloys & Carol Metty, and The John & Marilyn Rintamaki Family Charitable Fund.  For more information, contact Cori Convertito at 305-295-6616 x507 or cconvertito@kwahs.org.  Your Museums.  Your Community.  It takes an Island.

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