Stacy J. Lettman
Dr. Stacy J. Lettman is an Associate Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University, specializing in Caribbean literature and cultural studies. Her academic interests encompass postcolonial literature, Africana studies, performance studies, interdisciplinary research, oral literatures, and fairytales. In her courses, Dr. Lettman examines issues of identity, aesthetics, folklore, orality, Afro-diasporic spirituality, violence, and decolonization. Her interdisciplinary research on language and violence has been published in Encounters: An International Journal for the Study of Culture and Society and as a book chapter in The Black and Green Atlantic: Cross-Currents of the Black and Irish Diasporas.
Dr. Lettman’s recent book, The Slave Sublime: The Language of Violence in Caribbean Literature and Music (UNC Press, 2022), expands her exploration of language to the violence rooted in historical systems. Tracing historical legacies in the Caribbean to their present manifestations under globalization, the book delves into both real and imagined violence as depicted in Caribbean and Jamaican literature and music. It investigates how this violence is perpetuated in both art and state actions, and its implications for Caribbean cultural identity. Dr. Lettman links Jamaica’s high per capita murder rate to remnants of the estate system, specifically the economic dispossession and structural violence that continue to affect the island. She argues that colonial violence is so ingrained in the language of Jamaican literature and music that it has become a separate language of its own, paradoxically providing cultural modes of resistance. Drawing on Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “slave sublime,” Dr. Lettman reinterprets it through a Caribbean lens, offering a critical view of Jamaica, the Caribbean, and their political and literary histories while challenging Eurocentric frameworks. Situated at the intersection of philosophy, literary and musical analysis, and postcolonial theory, The Slave Sublime sheds new light on the lingering legacies of the Caribbean. Dr. Lettman was interviewed about the book in BAR Book Forum.
Dr. Lettman earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Southern California (USC), where she was an Irvine Foundation Research Fellow in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.