Professor Nicole Aljoe at The Centre for Black Humanities
Despite the on-going COVID pandemic, my sojourn at the Centre for Black Humanities in Bristol during the fall term of 2021 was an incredibly productive and intellectually engaging experience. I conducted research in the Bristol archives on two related projects… Read more…
The Centre for Black Humanities: Who we are and future directions
The Centre for Black Humanities is an international hub for Black Humanities research in the heart of Bristol. The Centre aims to foster the broad range of research currently being done at the University of Bristol around the artistic and intellectual work of people of African descent. Some of our current interdisciplinary projects include Dr Josie Gill’s research on… Read more…
Remembering Enslavement on August 23rd by Dr Jessica Moody
August 23rd has been designated by UNESCO as the ‘International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.’ [1]. This specific day was chosen because of its connection to the Haitian Revolution, the largest and most successful uprising of enslaved people as it was during the night of the 22nd to the 23rdAugust in 1791 that the revolution began. The selection of this date is purposeful. It foregrounds a narrative of African resistance, power and the agency of enslaved people within memory work and memorialisation, … Read more…
Bass Culture and the Black Humanities by Ivan Mouraviev
In a reggae dance hall session, the vibrations of bass are not only heard but felt. The speakers tingle your skin, clothes, and bones. Bass is everywhere, its low-frequency waves flowing through and around the crowd. Some dancers swim with the rhythms, some let the currents wash over. The DJ and selector curate these sounds… Read more…
Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the 17th Century by Dr José Lingna Nafafé
In the Anglophone historiography, debate on enslaved people’s experience and the abolition of Atlantic World slavery has been largely dominated by US historians whose work is often geographically focused on the US, the Caribbean and Anglophone Africa and temporally limited to the 18th and 19th centuries. Much less attention has been paid to Lusophone Africa, Brazil, Portugal, Spain and the Vatican… Read more…
The Poetics and Politics of Rap Music in the UK by Dr Justin Williams
The past decade in the UK has been rife with political discourse in all its forms: the spectre of Brexit has dominated over half this time, and now a post-Brexit landscape needs to deal with issues around the Irish Border…. Read more…
Race and Antiracism in Science and the Humanities by Dr Josie Gill
The following is an excerpt from a conversation between Josie Gill and Michell Chresfield published in the LA Review of Books in August 2021. Read more…