This website provides contextual information and interpretations of the novel Texaco (1992) by Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau. It was started in spring 2022 with undergraduate Honors students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in the course Honors 200-008: Caribbean Crucible of Globalization taught by Dr. Jessica Hutchins. Students in the course read and discuss Texaco in English translation, they conduct research using peer-reviewed and archival sources, and then write, edit, and publish wiki articles.
This knowledge base is intended to help readers of Texaco understand the world of the novel and engage more deeply with its formal and narrative complexities. The wiki format allows us to make visible the connections and tensions among the topics presented. It also demonstrates the evolving (and sometimes messy) process of knowledge production, which is dramatized in Texaco. As such, this website is a work-in-progress that invites our readers and writers into conversation.
This project is supported in part by the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), The Mellon Foundation, the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective (CDSC), and the Interdisciplinary Research & Informatics Scholarship (IRIS) Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Jessica A. Hutchins, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the John Martinson Honors Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and is the founding Director of the Texaco Wiki. She specializes in Caribbean and African Diaspora literatures, digital humanities, interdisciplinary education, and has developed innovative curriculum and open educational resources with both federal and private funding. She received the SIUE Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics Scholarship Center Faculty Fellowship, the Ann W. and Spencer T. Olin Fellowship, and was selected for the 2024 Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis.
