Discovering Britain through discourses of indigeneity II: British Empire and colonialism

Description

An event organised by the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group research network.

Download the event poster.

Speakers

• Richard Price (Professor of History, University of Maryland)
• Joy Porter (Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History, University of Hull)
• Stephanie Pratt (Former Associate Professor (Reader) in Art History, Plymouth University; First Cultural Ambassador for the Crow Creek Dakota Sioux)

Moderator

Benny Shen (University of Cambridge)

Abstract

British history is rife with change; ethnic, social and linguistic shifts have indelibly marked its present day. While discourses of ‘native’ or ‘original’ Britons in popular media are nothing new, with the surge in topics of Indigeneity across disciplines, some scholars have begun to apply Indigenous Studies theoretical frameworks to understanding different contexts, including British history. Such frameworks are a rather recent development, and have drawn both interest and critique. Our Michaelmas 2022 panel series ‘Discovering Britain Through Discourses of Indigeneity’ aims to explore British history through the lens of Indigeneity both in an attempt to subversively ‘discover’ British history, but also gain a deeper understanding of the term Indigenous. The second panel of the series focuses on the multifaceted impacts from British colonial history, both historical and ongoing, on Indigenous communities across the world, and how the concept of Indigeneity may or may not provide an alternative approach to gain a deeper understanding of British coloniality.

About the Speakers

Richard N Price has been Professor of History at the University of Maryland since 1982. Having studied with Ranajit Guha, Professor Price is a major contributor to the social history of the British working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in his early scholarly career. Professor Price has subsequently worked on a general, synthetic history of Britain since the late seventeenth century, and has more recently returned to the study of the experience of empire during the colonial encounter at the frontier of the Eastern Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century. Professor Price’s Making Empire. Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa (Cambridge, 2008), which has been awarded the Albion Prize for the Best Book in Post-1800 British History, recounted the dramatic and tragic story of the extension of British rule over the Xhosa. His latest book is Empire and Indigeneity: Histories and Legacies (Routledge, 2021).

Joy Porter of the University of Hull is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous history in relation to the environment. Professor Porter received the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers Writer of the Year Award for The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature (Cambridge University Press) in 2006 and the American Library Association’s Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Title Award for To Be Indian: The Life of Iroquois-Seneca Arthur Caswell Parker (The University of Oklahoma Press) in 2002. Professor Porter is Principal Investigator of the Treaties Spaces Research Group and is currently a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow working on a new book on the environmental record of President Nixon and the Republican Party. Professor Porter is also PI of the AHRC Research Grant ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain: Revealing Cultures of Diplomacy between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy’. Among her most recent books are Native American Environmentalism (Nebraska, 2014) and Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Stephanie Pratt (Dakota and British/American), formerly Associate Professor (Reader) in Art History at Plymouth University, UK, is well-known for her work on the visual and museum representations made of Native American/First Nations/Indigenous peoples from early contact to the present day. Her books include the seminal monograph American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840 (Oklahoma University Press, 2005). She curated two National Portrait Gallery exhibitions, Between Worlds, Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850 (2007) and George Catlin: American Indian Portraits (2013). Dr Pratt has worked since her retirement as a cultural consultant to several UK cultural institutions and NGOs. In 2015, she was appointed to the role of First Cultural Ambassador at Large for the Tribal Council of the Crow Creek Dakota Sioux based at Fort Thompson, South Dakota where she is an enrolled tribal member.

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For enquiries please contact the Networks Programme Manager.