The School
of American Studies is running a number of free public events to coincide with
Black History Month. Led by UEA staff and postgraduates, all of these talks are completely free and will be held at the Norwich Millennium Library as well as
Fusion at the Forum (see event listings below). They will cover a range of
subjects from Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation to the
Anti-Apartheid movement in Norwich. If you'd like any more information
about any of these events, or AMS's involvement in Black History Month as a
whole, please email Dr. Nick Grant (n.grant@uea.ac.uk).
Full
list of events:
Title: ‘“Forever Free?” Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation and the Real Meaning of Freedom’ – Dr. Becky Fraser (UEA)
Venue: Norwich Millennium Library
Date: 1st October
Time: 6-7:30 pm
Nature
of Event: Talk
Cost: Free
In the 150th year anniversary of President
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all enslaved peoples in
the Confederate States of America, this lecture will consider the very complex
and complicated dimensions of freedom for the nearly four million enslaved
peoples the Proclamation applied to. In addition it will question whether
Lincoln can be, and indeed should be, hailed as the Great Emancipator,
given the limits of the actual declaration and its historical legacies.
Venue: Norwich Millennium Library
Date: 10th October
Time: 12-1:30 pm
Nature
of Event: Talk
Cost: Free
This talk
looks at visual representations of slavery in museums and memorial sites across
the United Kingdom. It considers the unseen and the unsaid in such
commemorative spaces and addresses the idea that the practice of
memorialisation is twinned with forgetting. Contemplating the evolution of
museological practice from the birth of the modern museum in the eighteenth
century, it also ponders whether such practices can offer restitution and for
whom, if they do, this restitution serves.
Venue: Norwich Millennium Library
Date: 15th October
Time: 6-7:30 pm
Nature
of Event: Talk
Cost: Free
The
controversy surrounding both the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning The
Color Purple (1982) and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film adaptation focused on
claims that Walker had refused a full focus on racism in order to discuss
African American women’s experiences of sexism in the 1930s American South.
Moreover, Walker’s depiction of often fraught relationships and power dynamics
between African American men and women, and within black families was condemned
as fuelling racist stereotypes. Taking The Color Purple as a starting
point, this lecture will assess the relationship between Walker’s writing and
her own passionate and ongoing commitment to political commentary and
activism.
Title: ‘The Local Dimension of the
Anti-Apartheid Movement: the Case of Norfolk’ – Dr. Nick Grant (UEA)
Venue: Norwich Millennium Library
Date: 16th October
Time: 6-7:30 pm
Nature
of Event: Talk
Cost: Free
This talk
will address the materials that make up the Global Anti-Apartheid Movement in
Norwich exhibition. It will explore the contributions of local businesses,
politicians and students in Norwich to the international consumer boycott of
apartheid South Africa.
Date: 24th October 2013
Nature
of event: Talk
Venue: Fusion, the Forum, Norwich
Time: 6–7:30 pm – Talk followed by
Q&A.
Cost: Free
Prof.
Charles Lumpkins will discuss the recent trial and acquittal of George
Zimmerman for the murder of the African American teenager Trayvon Martin. He
will analyse the racial significance of the case in the US as well as the continued problem of racial profiling in the United States and the United
Kingdom. Prof. Lumpkins is lecturer in the School of Labor and Employment
Relations at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the history
of African Americans with particular interests relating to the history of
social and political movements, the history of the working-class. He 2008 he
published American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics with
Ohio University Press.
