Pioneering Caribbean intellectual who made an invaluable contribution to the study of literature, oral tradition and calypso passes away at age 80
Professor Emeritus Gordon Rohlehr, a beloved Caribbean academic renowned for his teaching and scholarship in West Indian literature, calypso, oral poetry, and cricket, passed away on January 29, 2023. He was 80.
Professor Rohlehr began his UWI career in 1968 at the St Augustine campus as an assistant lecturer in English Literature, spending four decades as an educator, writer, researcher and public intellectual. His contributions to the study and understanding of Caribbean culture have made an invaluable impact on the university.
“His legacy is carried in the students he nurtured at the St Augustine campus through conversation and intense enquiry,” said Campus Principal Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine. “His former students and those who thronged his lecture rooms, as well as the many scholars and intellectuals who have benefitted from his pioneering and intense and thorough research, share a deep sense of loss and gratitude. We extend condolences on behalf of the Campus community to his family.”
Born in Guyana, Professor Rohlehr studied at Queen’s College before attending The UWI Mona (then known as the University College of the West Indies), and then the University of Birmingham in the UK. As a preeminent West Indian scholar, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Tulane University and several others in the US and Canada.
However, his commitment to UWI St Augustine remained throughout his life, and he made many pivotal contributions to the university, as well as Caribbean society.
“He became part of an international movement that reflected on the traumatic nature of New World history and who saw the literature that emerged as rich in contradictions and promise. The multifaceted nature of that history of enslavement, indentureship and European incursion shaped Caribbean scholarship and literature, and shaped him,” said a statement from the St Augustine campus.
Professor Rohlehr initiated and taught the first course on West Indian Literature in 1970.
“That scholarship, and his charismatic lecturing,” the statement read, “fuelled generations of Caribbean scholars, many of whom have gone on to teach the courses he created or inspired in the Literatures in English section at the UWI.”
Professor Rohlehr wrote in small journals, in newspapers such as Tapia, and spoke on radio and television. He connected with and interpreted the writings of the literary giants of the day, including Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, George Lamming, Wilson Harris, Roger Mais and Martin Carter.
His ground-breaking work includes several books, hundreds of essays, interviews, broadcasts and lectures. In 2022, he was recognised for his contributions to Trinidad and Tobago with the Chaconia Medal (Silver).
