Decolonising your reading list

Some tips and useful resources for decolonising reading list in the Arts.

Decolonising the Discipline is a collaborative initiative undertaken jointly by colleagues at the English Association, the Institute of English Studies, the University of East Anglia, the Postcolonial Studies Association and University English. It aims to develop platforms for discipline-wide conversations that can foster and support collaborative action across English literature, language and creative writing.

Watch a recording of the 'Decolonising the Discipline' project's first online seminar which took place on Friday 25th September 2020

An online talk, "The Discipline in 2020", which discusses the Decolonising the Discipline project

Films and scholarship by Africans in particular, and by people of colour in general, are frequently marginalised if not altogether excluded. This prevents exciting exchanges that could help to re-envision Film and Screen Studies for the twenty-first century, in an era in which greater access to the technological means of making films, and circulating them on a range of screens, means that dynamic “screen worlds” are developing at a rapid rate. This project is studying these “screen worlds” (in both their textual forms and industrial structures), with a focus on African contexts, as a way of centring the most marginalised regional cinema.

One of the journal's inaugural aims was to provide much needed literary and critical coverage of writers from African, Caribbean, Asian and Black British backgrounds who often struggled to get adequate attention in the mainstream press.

Black Women Writers presents 100,000 pages of literature and essays on feminist issues, written by authors from Africa and the African diaspora. Facing both sexism and racism, black women needed to create their own identities and movements. The collection documents that effort, presenting the woman’s perspective on the diversity and development of black people generally, and in particular the works document the evolution of black feminism. Many of the writings have been hidden in rare and hard-to-find texts, obscure typewritten documents, photocopied journals, and other fugitive sources.

The Black British Women Writers website seeks to stimulate the discussion of the literary art of women writers of African and African-Caribbean descent living in Britain. It introduces these authors, the criticism their work has generated – already over 400 bibliographical references at the moment of the website's launch – and some of the scholars who have produced this criticism; it also provides information about relevant past and future activities, in particular academic events centred on the promotion and exploration of Black British Women’s Writing as a field.

News and information portal for those interested in the Black British writing scene, including literary events, book clubs, bookshop outlets, History Corner (articles on past african caribbean writers, or institutions) and a list of UK based writers