This documentary, produced by Jamaican NYU Professor Leo Douglas, seeks to retell the story of Queen Nanny of the Maroons, national heroine of Jamaica. Traditionally Queen Nanny (also known as Grandie Nanny) has been portrayed through a lens of mountain guerrilla warfare and her successful anti-slavery emancipatory military campaigns in the early to mid-1700s. But here she is represented in what some scholars of the Black Atlantic and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade believe to be a more accurate and broader reality – an early Afro-Caribbean ecologist, a protector of the springs, forests and watersheds, and as the quintessential Black conservationist and environmental justice leader, and scholar of the wild places of the mountains of Jamaica. The “Reimagining Nanny: Her Sword – A Seed Documentary” was initiated as part of a larger project reflecting on Jamaica’s 60th year of national independence from Great Britain.
Leo Douglas is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University (NYU). He is also the Director of the Caribbean Initiative within NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). He received his Ph.D., a Masters of Ecology and Environmental Biology, and an Advanced Environmental Policy Certificate from Columbia University. He also holds a Masters of Philosophy degree in Zoology from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He is a past-president of BirdsCaribbean, the largest single international NGO focusing on the flora and fauna of the greater Caribbean region. He is a Government of Jamaica Millennium Scholar, Musgrave Medal Winner - for Distinguished Eminence in the Field of Science, a Partners in Flight (PIF) Leadership Award Winner - for Outstanding Contribution to Bird Conservation, a 2021 NYU Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award Recipient.
This documentary, produced by Jamaican NYU Professor Leo Douglas, seeks to retell the story of Queen Nanny of the Maroons, national heroine of Jamaica. Traditionally Queen Nanny (also known as Grandie Nanny) has been portrayed through a lens of mountain guerrilla warfare and her successful anti-slavery emancipatory military campaigns in the early to mid-1700s. But here she is represented in what some scholars of the Black Atlantic and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade believe to be a more accurate and broader reality – an early Afro-Caribbean ecologist, a protector of the springs, forests and watersheds, and as the quintessential Black conservationist and environmental justice leader, and scholar of the wild places of the mountains of Jamaica. The “Reimagining Nanny: Her Sword – A Seed Documentary” was initiated as part of a larger project reflecting on Jamaica’s 60th year of national independence from Great Britain.
Leo Douglas is a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University (NYU). He is also the Director of the Caribbean Initiative within NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS). He received his Ph.D., a Masters of Ecology and Environmental Biology, and an Advanced Environmental Policy Certificate from Columbia University. He also holds a Masters of Philosophy degree in Zoology from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He is a past-president of BirdsCaribbean, the largest single international NGO focusing on the flora and fauna of the greater Caribbean region. He is a Government of Jamaica Millennium Scholar, Musgrave Medal Winner - for Distinguished Eminence in the Field of Science, a Partners in Flight (PIF) Leadership Award Winner - for Outstanding Contribution to Bird Conservation, a 2021 NYU Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award Recipient.