Undermining the interchangeability of Britishness and Whiteness: David Olusoga’s introduction to Black and British. The role of visual culture in historical memory. Drake’s Jewel.  Watching the introduction of John Akomfrah’s documentary The Stuart Hall Project (2013). 

Visual texts: The Stuart Hall Project (dir. Akomfrah, 2013)  

Readings: 

Olusoga, David. 2016. Black and British: A Forgotten History. London: Macmillan (Introduction)

From where—from which cultural positionality—do we understand the history and culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Reading Riz Ahmed’s Airports and Auditions. 

The “clash of civilisations” and Islamophobia: commented reading of the essay “Airports and Auditions” by Riz Ahmed (2016).  

British India and restitution 

The Koh-i-Noor diamond affair. Watching an excerpt from Kavi Raz’s film The Black Prince. 

Readings:  

Ahmed, Riz. 2016. “Airports and Auditions,” The Good Immigrant, ed. Nikesh Shukla. London: Unbound, 59-68. 

Matthew, H. C. G. (2010). “9. The Liberal Age (1851-1914).” The Oxford History of Britain. Ed. Kenneth O. Morgan, Rev. Ed. Oxford: OUP. 518-582.  

Shah, Siddhartha V. 2017. “Romancing the Stone: Victoria, Albert, and the Koh-i-Noor Diamond.” West 86th, 24: 1, 29-46.

The British Empire and media technology 

The political, naval, industrial, and economic supremacy achieved by Great Britain during the 18th century, on which the imperial expansion of Victorian England is based.   

The connection between the British Empire and technological developments: the case of photography and film. Queen Victoria, the “first media monarch”.  

Readings: Plunkett, John. 2003. Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 150-155.