Professor Curwen Best
BA (UWI), MPhil (UWI), PhD (Birmingham)

Professor of Popular Culture and Literary Studies and
Head of Department

Room: X1
Tel.: (246) 417-4416
Fax: (246) 434 0634
E-mail: curwen.best (at) cavehill.uwi.edu

Brief Bio:

Curwen Best did his undergraduate degree and MPhil at UWI, Cave Hill before going on to the University of Birmingham to read for his PhD. He joined the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in the mid-1990s as Assistant Lecturer. He pioneered the teaching of Popular Culture at Cave Hill while also conducting frontier research on facets of Caribbean and Western culture. The findings of this research are contained in his major publications. He is currently Professor of Popular Culture and Literary Studies and Head of Department, Language Linguistics and Literature.   

Research Interests:

Popular Culture; Cyberculture; Caribbean Literature and culture.

Select Publications:

• Barbadian Popular Music: and the Politics of Caribbean Culture (1999)
  
  
• Roots to Popular Culture: Barbadian Aesthetics from Kamau Brathwaite to Hardcore Styles (2001)
  
  
• Culture@ the Cutting Edge: Tracking Caribbean Popular Music (2005)
  
  
• The Politics of Caribbean Cyberculture  (2008)
  
  
• Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo: Art Politics and the Music of Ritual (2009)