Audra A. Diptée - Chained in Paradise: History as the Battle

Join us for a community event with Audra A. Diptée, 2025/2026 Visiting Public Humanities Faculty Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto.

Dr. Diptée will present on her most recent work entitled Chained in Paradise: How history was used to change the future (A Caribbean Story). It explores the relationship between power and historical production in the twentieth century Caribbean as well as its impact on the region’s future.

When & Where:

Tuesday, January 13, 2026 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

DOORS OPEN 12:40 PM

William Doo Auditorium New College III 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 1C7

Bio:

Audra A. Diptée, Associate Professor of History, Carleton University, is a historian, author, and academic. She specializes in Caribbean history. Her work reflects her interest in the ways historical thinking can advance social justice. She has won awards from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center (Italy), Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Centre, the Université de Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris) and the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her current research project, entitled Chained in Paradise, explores the relationship between power, history, and collective memory in the 20th century Caribbean. To learn more, visit her website. Audra A. Diptée was born in Trinidad & Tobago. She is a shameless Francophile.

Chained in Paradise: How history was used to change the future (A Caribbean Story)

Through the publication of a book and accompanying website, Chained in Paradise offers an analysis of the ways in which misinformation, propaganda, and censorship were used by the British colonial office to create distorted perceptions of the Caribbean past that served their interests during the Cold War and decolonization process. It also explores the ways in which anticolonialists reinterpreted this information and mobilized these ideas as they articulated their own vision of a postcolonial future. In addition, her work highlights how collective memory in the Caribbean informed the region’s future international relations in the later decades of the Cold War.