When
Tuesday, April 20, 2021. 2-3:15 PM West Coast / 2-3:15 PM AZ / 5-6:15 PM East Coast
Participants in the roundtable
- Carolyn Betensky, Professor of English, University of Rhode Island
- Melissa Free, Assistant Professor of English, Arizona State University
- Sophia Hsu, Assistant Professor of English, Lehman College, CUNY
- Cherrie Kwok, PhD Candidate and Jefferson Fellow, English, University of Virginia
- Ji Eun Lee, BK21 Postdoctoral Fellow, English, Sungkyunkwan University
This event is hosted by The Colonial, the Postcolonial, and the Decolonial research cluster, sponsored by the Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) at Arizona State University.
“Africa, Diaspora, and the British Empire” is a working group subsection of Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom (UVC), which will relaunch with new materials soon. UVC, which aims in part to support Victorian studies in the process of shaking itself out of its unreflective and assumed whiteness, was formed in response to Undisciplining Victorian Studies, a special issue of Victorian Studies, whose introduction can be found here. The Los Angeles Review of Books published a shorter version of the issue’s introduction.
Composed of five Victorian studies scholars from different backgrounds and institutions at various stages of their careers, the “Africa, Diaspora, and the British Empire” working group designed a number of lesson plans to push themselves and others to integrate into Victorian studies courses materials that are not only about and from Africa but also by Africans and the African diaspora. Though each lesson plan had a lead developer, the process entailed sustained collaboration and reflection, on positionality, subject, method, and goals.
Sophia Hsu, one of the organizers of UVC, will speak a bit about the site. She and the other developers of the “Africa, Diaspora, and the British Empire” subsection will then share their reasons for participating, their experience with the process, and their hopes for the future. Questions will be welcome.
Related Reading
Burton, Antoinette. Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism. Duke, 2011. xxi + 392 pp.
Burton has been a leader. . . in destabilizing the Whiggish, white man's model of imperial history. Her book importantly challenges the ways in which historians and the publics they influence continue to think about imperialism (both British and American) as well as about globalization, race, gender, and the practice and teaching of history. — Patrick Brantlinger
Last modified 19 April 2021