Empire, Colonial & Postcolonial Studies Reading Group
The Colonial and Postcolonial Studies reading group began in Spring 2020. We covered topics relating to race, slavery, empire, anticolonialism, gender, ecology, art and aesthetics, and museum studies.
Readings are suggested by members/experts in the field who lead sessions by introducing the topics/texts and responding to queries during meetings. Sometimes, there are open forum discussions on set texts.
Currently, members belong to a wide array of disciplines including language studies, English and comparative literatures, creative writing, theatre and performance studies, history, sociology, politics, urban studies, museum studies, law and business studies, film making, and activism.
We meet fortnightly on Thursdays at 4pm. The Autumn 2020 meetings will start from Oct 8, via Zoom. A list of dates and topics is given below. For a quick note on our readings from last term, please see below the Spring 2020 list.
Autumn 2020
Oct 8: Open Forum Discussion: Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race
Oct 22: Christopher Reid, Black Left Feminism
Nov 5: Prof Nigel Leask, Romanticism and Decolonisation
Nov 19: Dr Diljeet Bhachu, Museum Practices in Scotland
Dec 3: Dr Briony Wickes, Animals and Imperialism
Dec 17: Dr Hongling Liang, the "Women Question" in China and India
Spring 2020
Jan 30: Dr Sourit Bhattacharya (English Literature) on Priyamvada Gopal, 'Black Voices Matter' in Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (2019)
Feb 13: Dr Rachel Douglas (Modern Languages) on Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)
Feb 27: Jessica Pinney and Prof Andrew Smith (Sociology) on by Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang 'Decolonization is Not a Metaphor' (2012)
(March and April Proceedings were disrupted for industrial strike action and the Coronavirus pandemic)
May 14: Dania Thomas (Business Law) on 'Empire: Twenty Years on' by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2019)
May 28: Ana Mazza (English Literature) on Rob Nixon, "Unimagined Communities: Developmental Refugees, Megadams and Monumental Modernity" (2010).
June 11: .Christopher Reid (independent film maker) on Thomas Blackett, The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery (2018).
June 25: Dr Giovanna Vitelli (The Hunterian), on Rachael Minott, "The Past is Now: Confronting Museums' Complicity in Imperial Celebration" (2019)
July 9: Dr Christine Whyte (History) on Matthew J. Christensen, "Cannibals in the Postcolony: Sierra Leone's Intersecting Hegemonies in Charlie Haffner's Slave Revolt Drama 'Amistad Kata-Kata'" (2005).
July 25: Prof Bridget Fowler (Sociology) on Pierre Bourdieu, "Making the Economic Habitus: Algerian Workers Revisited" (2000).