How does Critical Race Theory Travel?

A Grand Challenge ad hoc funded Justice and Equality funded project.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the original project could not be pursued. Nonetheless, collaborator Dr Xine Yao used the funding alongside Dr Rachel Holmes and Dr Lara Choksey to create the Race, Power, and Poetics seminar series. Early career and established scholars from across the UK, US, and Canada were invited, who were creating interventions in different periods of literary studies (medieval, early modern, eighteenth century, nineteenth century and contemporary literature). The speakers were:

• Natalia Cecire (University of Sussex)
• Ruben Espinosa (University of Texas, El Paso)
• Christine Okoth (University of Warwick)
• Brigitte Fielder (University of Madison-Wisconsin)
• Sunny Xiang (Yale University)
• Shazia Jagot (University of York)
• Eugenia Zurowski (McMaster University)
• Nedda Mehdizadeh (University of California, Los Angeles)

The seminar series fed into the Decolonial Forum staff-student initiative and led to a permanent position in Colonial to Postcolonial Literatures within the English department. Thus, a second and third-year module of the same name was developed. 

The students who attended three or more of the online seminars were offered a book of their choice by one of the RPP speakers, or a seminar's theme, or to attend a communal dinner in London with one of our speakers. 

The seminar series helped create a sense of community for students and staff during the lockdown period, and highlighted the department's responsiveness to the changes compelled by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. 

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