Historically informed, theoretically sophisticated and critically perceptive, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace's engagingly written The British Slave Trade and Public Memory is a remarkable achievement in cultural criticism. Only someone who combines Wallace's knowledge of the eighteenth century with her critical acumen could show so convincingly why and how Britain's dominant role in the slave trade two hundred years ago informs British material and textual culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. -- Vincent Carretta, University of Maryland, editor of Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century With her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century British history and culture, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace ventures into the present to examine ways in which contemporary Britons are dealing with Britain's history of slave trading and slave ownership. This project is unique in its imaginative rethinking of disciplinary boundaries and historical periods. With her analysis and evaluation of these various kinds of social practices and popular culture, Wallace enters into public debates current in Britain about nation, identity, and social justice that are crucial to Britain's attempt to see itself as a multiethnic society. -- Beth Tobin, Arizona State University, author of Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 This engaged and engaging study considers how slavery has been represented in British popular culture at the twentieth century's end. Films and television mini-series, plays and novels, museum exhibitions, and history trails all come under Kowaleski Wallace's discerning gaze. Those who think the transatlantic slave trade is 'simply history' will be moved to think again after reading this book. -- Madge Dresser, University of the West of England, Bristol, author of Slavery Obscured: The Social History of the Slave Trade in an English Provincial Port
List of Illustrations Preface Introduction: Millennial Reckonings 1. Commemorating the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Liverpool and Bristol 2. Fictionalizing Slavery in the United Kingdom, 1990-2000 3. Seeing Slavery and the Slave Trade 4. Transnationalism and Performance in 'Biyi Bandele's Oroonoko Conclusion Notes Index
Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace is associate professor of English at Boston College. She is the author of Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century and Their Fathers' Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Patriarchal Complicity.
"This new perspective enhances the vision of a tolerant, diverse, multiethnic society. Recommended." -- Choice " The British Slave Trade and Public Memory, is a welcome and thought-provoking study." -- James Walvin, The Public Historian "Through this creative melding of museum, literary, and performance studies Wallace considers the responsibilities historical pedagogy entails." -- Deidre Lynch, Studies in English Literature
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