Introductory description

This final-year Advanced Option module examines the place of memory and memorialisation in relation to slavery and its aftermath in the Atlantic world. The commemorative events surrounding the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade in 2007, along with the demands made for Western governments and other institutions – including universities – to apologise for past involvement in slavery and to pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people, have shown the continuing significance of the memory of slavery. However, this module will not only explore the construction of public memory about slavery (as well as forms of forgetting) as a twentieth and twenty-first century phenomenon, but consider how memory and memorialisation and have operated in the past. Throughout, individual and collective memories are examined through their expression in texts, sites and performances. Across the module, memory is considered as a means through which identities are understood and expressed, and as a contested realm of social and political struggle. The primary focus of the module is on the Caribbean, and how slavery in and slave-trading to the region are remembered in Europe, but it will also consider USA, Brazil and West Africa. The module uses historical work on memory and also attends to debates in related fields, such as sociology, cultural geography and the interdisciplinary field of ‘memory studies’.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

The module starts with the 2007 commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade before reviewing the histories of Atlantic slavery and key concepts that can be used to study memory. It then examines some of the historical ways in which memory and slavery have been intertwined, before turning to contemporary manifestations, including film and the ‘neo-slave narrative’ literary genre. Early in term 2, we will focus on the commemoration of Atlantic slavery, its consequences, ending and legacies in museums, which will include a fieldtrip. The module ends by considering some recent issues such as ‘slavery tourism’ and demands that have been made for apologies and reparations.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the history of slavery, memory, and memorialisation
• Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of key themes and case studies relating to the memorialisation of slavery in Europe, Africa and the Americas
• Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of past and present efforts to memorialise slavery in Britain, and other circum-Atlantic contexts, including through comparative approaches
• Take responsibility to identify, design, and produce a coherent project on memory and slavery by creating content for a non-academic audience
• Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to the study of (social and cultural) memory

Indicative reading list

• Araujo, Ana Lucia (ed.), Living History: Encountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2009).
• Araujo, Ana Lucia (ed.), Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space (London, 2012).
• Araujo, Ana Lucia, Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic (Amherst, NY, 2010).
• Araujo, Ana Lucia, Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery (Routledge, 2014).
• Beckles, Hilary, Britain's Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide (Kingston, Jamaica, 2013).
• Chivallon, Christine, L'Esclavage, du Souvenir à la Mémoire: Contribution à une Anthropologie de la Caraïbe (Karthala - CIRESC, 2012). [in French]
• Cubitt, Geoffrey, History and Memory (Manchester, 2008).
• Dann, Graham M. S. and A. V. Seaton (eds), Slavery, Contested Heritage, and Thanatourism (New York, 2001).
• Donington, Katie, Ryan Hanley and Jessica Moody (eds), Britain’s History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin’ (Liverpool, 2016).
• Eichstedt, Jennifer and Stephen Small, Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums (Washington, DC; Chesham, 2002).
• Frith, Nicola and Kate Hodgson (eds), Limits of Memory: Legacies of Slavery in the Francophone World (Oxford, 2015).
• Gibney, Mark (ed.), The Age of Apology: Facing up to the Past (Philadelphia, 2008).
• Hall, Catherine, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington, and Rachel Lang, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
• Hartman, Saidiya V., Lose your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York, 2008).
• Higman, Barry W., Writing West Indian Histories (London, 1999).
• Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
• Horton, James Oliver and Lois E. Horton (eds), Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (Chapel Hill, 2009).
• Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth, The British Slave Trade and Public Memory (New York, 2006).
• Oldfield, John, ‘Chords of Freedom’: Commemoration, Ritual and British Transatlantic Slavery (Manchester, 2007).
• Oostindie, Gert (ed.), Facing up to the Past: Perspectives on the Commemoration of Slavery from Africa, the Americas and Europe (Kingston, Jamaica, 2001).
• Rice, Alan, Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic (Liverpool, 2010).
• Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York, 1996).
• Torpey, John (ed.), Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (Oxford, 2003).
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA, 1995).
• Wood, Marcus, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 (Manchester, 2000).
• Wood, Marcus, The Horrible Gift of Freedom: Atlantic Slavery and the Representation of Emancipation (Athens, GA, 2010).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.