Join us for the annual James McCune Smith Lecture by Dr Leighan Renaud (University of Bristol). Dr Renaud's talk is entitled "Beyond the Nuclear: Matrifocality and the Caribbean Family" and will be held on Thursday 12 November at 5-7 PM in the Hunterian Art Gallery. This event is free, but capacity is limited, so please ensure to register on Eventbrite. In June 2026, CARICOM amended their Ten Point Plan for Reparations. Alongside a more direct call for financial compensation for the descendants of enslaved people in the Caribbean, they added a plan point: ‘Compensation for Gender Based Violence and Assault on Family’. In it, they recognise the specific impacts that enslavement had on family models in the region. Indeed, the prevalence of non-nuclear and matrifocal (mother-centred) families in the Caribbean has often been attributed to enslavement, with some scholars arguing that the conditions for trafficked Africans in the region rendered the nuclear family an impossibility. Renaud asks the question: are non-nuclear families in the Caribbean necessarily a problem, or do they offer opportunities to broaden definitions of family, mothering, fathering and community? In this lecture, Renaud thinks about the representation of matrifocality and non-nuclear families in Caribbean literature as a way to imagine non-hegemonic world re/building. Through an exploration of the possibilities and limitations of matrifocality as an organisational tool for Caribbean families and communities, Renaud troubles existing assumptions about representations of the non-nuclear family and positions matrifocality as a structure that allows us to question the colonial normativity of the idealised nuclear family. Biography Leighan Renaud is Lecturer in Caribbean Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bristol, UK. She acts as Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies UK, and also co-directs the Bristol Caribbean Studies Studio and the Centre for Black Humanities at the University of Bristol. Her research interests include contemporary Caribbean fiction, Eastern Caribbean folklore, representations of the Caribbean family, and Black mermaids. She has published work on literary representations of the Caribbean family, Notting Hill Carnival, gender-based violence in the Caribbean and the indigenous mermaid in Monique Roffey's The Mermaid of Black Conch. She published her first monograph, Mothering and Matrifocality in Contemporary Caribbean Literature in May 2026. Sponsored through a generous bequest from the Merchants House.

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