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This essay reflects on the colonial Spanish Caribbean as a heuristic that enriches Caribbean studies. First, it meditates on the usefulness and limitations of applying the category of the Spanish Caribbean to the analysis of some pre- and post-seventeenth-century texts. Then it focuses on the meaning of the nineteenth century in the Spanish Caribbean, with particular attention to the Caribbean confederation and 1898 as key moments in the colonial and decolonial process of this region. Then the essay turns to the notion of criollismo in the Spanish Caribbean and its dialectic relationship with creole and creoleness as two different fictive ethnicities that are signified differently in Latin America and the French and Anglo-Caribbean, respectively. The essay concludes with a proposal for the Spanish Caribbean as a heuristic that reconnects Spanish, Anglo-, and French Caribbean literatures in a comparative Caribbbean studies framework.

This essay introduces the special section "Con-Federating the Archipelago: The Confederación Antillana and the West Indies Federation," which interrogates the literary, intellectual, social, and political imaginaries fomented by the Confederación Antillana (Antillean Confederation) and the West Indies Federation, with the aim of promoting comparative studies and dialogue among scholars working on these two political projects. The Confederación Antillana was conceived to bring together three Spanish Antilles in dialogue with Haiti and Jamaica from the 1860s to 1898; the West Indies Federation became a governing body in the British Caribbean territories from 1958–62. These "con-federated" forms reverberate together in the idea of trans-Caribbean unity as a utopian reference for anti-imperial sovereignty and the decolonial achievement of racial equality. The guest editors provide a historical trajectory of both confederation projects in order to identify points of convergence and divergence between these two collective political projects to guide future comparative studies.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Thinking beyond Hetero/Homo Normativities / Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda / Tobias, Sarah -- Part I: Gender Boundaries within Educational Spaces -- 1. Creating a Gender-Inclusive Campus / Beemyn, Genny / Rankin, Susan R. -- 2. Transgendering the Academy: Ensuring Transgender Inclusion in Higher Education / Park, Pauline -- Part II: Trans Imaginaries -- 3. "I'll call him Mahood instead, I prefer that, I'm queer": Samuel Beckett's Spatial Aesthetic / Crawford, Lucas -- 4. Excruciating Improbability and the Transgender Jamaican / Valens, Keja -- 5. TRANScoding the Transnational Digital Economy / Chen, Jian -- Part III: Crossing Borders / Crossing Gender -- 6. When Things Don't Add Up: Transgender Bodies and the Mobile Borders of Biometrics / Beauchamp, Toby -- 7. Connecting the Dots: National Security, the Crime-Migration Nexus, and Trans Women's Survival / Butler Burke, Nora -- 8. Affective Vulnerability and Transgender Exceptionalism: Norma Ureiro in Transgression / Aizura, Aren Z. -- Part IV: Trans Activism and Policy -- 9. The T in LGBTQ: How Do Trans Activists Perceive Alliances within LGBT and Queer Movements in Québec (Canada)? / Chacha Enriquez, Mickael -- 10. Translatina Is about the Journey: A Dialogue on Social Justice for Transgender Latinas in San Francisco / Rodríguez de Ruíz, Alexandra / Ochoa, Marcia -- 11. LGB within the T: Sexual Orientation in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey and Implications for Public Policy / Herman, Jody L. -- Part V: Transforming Disciplines and Pedagogy -- 12. Adventures in Trans Biopolitics: A Comparison between Public Health and Critical Academic Research Praxes / Hwahng, Sel J. -- 13. Stick Figures and Little Bits: Toward a Nonbinary Pedagogy / Enke, A. Finn -- Conclusion: Trans Fantasizing: From Social Media to Collective Imagination / Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda / Tobias, Sarah -- Notes on Contributors -- Index