This one-day conference, organized by the Society of Antiquaries of London, will be held in the Society’s rooms at Burlington House, Piccadilly, on Friday 20 May 2022. The aim of the event is to take a concrete step in promoting greater understanding of multi-racial heritage in Britain, and supporting a theoretical and methodological framework of studies which require socially inclusive and collaborative scholarship.
The conference will explore the ways in which literature, with particular reference to varieties of English, has addressed, engaged with, or circumvented the history of European colonization in and around the Caribbean; and the legacies of societies, cultures, material and economic conditions generated by the large-scale exploitation of slavery from the 16th to the 19th century. We hope the papers will approach these topics through both a historical and contemporaneous literary lens.
At this stage, we are inviting proposals for thematic sessions that will present analyses and discussion of reception histories and supplementary writing (prequels, sequels or alternative narratives) in relation to canonical English/Western literature, addressing or readdressing those issues. The programme is intended to give equal attention to Caribbean literature writing back to the Western ‘canon’ as well as to publicly foregrounded modes of art (both popular and exclusive) in Britain. Topics discussed may well include recent and contemporary dramatizations of such literature. The pragmatic decision to specify a primary focus on literature in English acknowledges that such processes are reflected in other European languages too.
An ambitious and wide-ranging objective of this kind automatically requires an approach to cultural history and material heritage which is equally diverse in terms of media, and targets relevant evidence in interfaces between material culture, literature and representative art, architecture and landscape history. In the historical and political contextualization of these studies, discussion of comparable attempts to address the history and legacy of the African-origin population of the West Indies in other forms of art are welcomed. Fields of cultural heritage and production respectively that are of prominence in this respect are the curation, presentation and representation of historical buildings connected to traders and plantation owners, and estates, monuments and collections associated with authors and their circles. Specific themes identified as potentially fruitful are ‘Houses, gardens and plantations’ and ‘Ships shipping and the sea’.
We should consequently be extremely grateful to receive feedback, suggestions and proposals for either panels or abstracts for individual papers from which we can proceed to construct a full programme. Please send these to Dr Linda Grant on [email protected]. We would very much welcome initial responses by Friday 3 September 2021.