Entangled Islands: Imagining the End of Slavery in Jamaica Through the Trope of the Haitian Revolution, 1791-1834
Navn på bevillingshaver
Stephanie Volder
Titel
PhD fellow
Institution
Oxford University
Beløb
DKK 1,100,000
År
2023
Bevillingstype
Visiting Fellowships at University of Oxford
Hvad?
This project examines how a transatlantic print culture of Black Atlantic literature, colonial newspapers, and epistolary writing represented revolutionary events in Haiti through a predominantly Gothic aesthetic. It explores a prevalent Jamaica/Haiti comparison in contemporary writing in which Jamaica and its future were read via the history of Saint-Domingue and the establishment of Haiti.
Hvorfor?
The study offers a new perspective on how British race and emancipation policies were shaped by the emotional appeal of a popular Gothic literary form. The project explores new material to shed light on how black liberation in Haiti shaped slavery discussions in Britain and played an important role in the development of a European self-understanding and a Western liberal notion of freedom.
Hvordan?
The project examines how Haiti became a common ‘topos’ of terror and horror in a transatlantic print culture emerging in the wake of the Haitian Revolution. It does so to understand how contemporary discussions of the end of slavery in Britain reworked and recycled images of racial difference, as tropes, across a diverse field of cultural production.