Black Studies is a hugely important, and yet undervalued, academic field of enquiry that is marked by its disciplinary absence and omission from academic curricula in Britain. There is a long and rich history of research on Blackness and Black populations in Britain. However Blackness in Britain has too often been framed through the lens of racialised deficits, constructed as both marginal and pathological.
Blackness in Britain attends to and grapples with the absence of Black Studies in Britain and the parallel crisis of Black marginality in British society. It begins to map the field of Black Studies scholarship from a British context, by collating new and established voices from scholars writing about Blackness in Britain. Split into five parts, it examines:
- Black studies and the challenge of the Black British intellectual;
- Revolution, resistance and state violence;
- Blackness and belonging;
- exclusion and inequality in education;
- experiences of Black women and the gendering of Blackness in Britain.
This interdisciplinary collection represents a landmark in building Black Studies in British academia, presenting key debates about Black experiences in relation to Britain, Black Europe and the wider Black diaspora. With contributions from across various disciplines including sociology, human geography, medical sociology, cultural studies, education studies, post-colonial English literature, history, and criminology, the book will be essential reading for scholars and students of the multi- and inter-disciplinary area of Black Studies.
Introduction by Lisa Amanda Palmer Part I: Black Studies and the Challenge of the Black British Intellectual 1. The Absence of Black Studies in Britain by Lisa Amanda Palmer 2. The Invisible Outsider: Reflections from Beyond the Ivory Tower by Martin Glynn Part II: Revolution, Resistance and State Violence 3. The Case of the Two Williams: Black Revolutionists in Nineteenth Century Britain by Tony Talburt 4. Black Is a Country: Black People in the West as a Colonised Minority by Kehinde Andrews 5. Old and New Violence: From Slavery to Serco by Adam Elliot-Cooper Part III: Blackness and Belonging 6. Black British Writing and an English Literary Belonging by Helen Cousins 7. Grime Central! Subterranean Ground-In Grit Engulfing Manicured Mainstream Spaces by Monique Charles 8. Is David Starkey Right or Has the Jamaican Bible Movement Lost Its Mind?: Language and Atonement by Robert Beckford Part IV: Exclusion and Inequality in Education 9. The Ties That Bind: Questions of Empire and Belonging in Black British Educational Activism by Nicole M Jackson 10. The British School-To-Prison Pipeline by Karen Graham 11. The Black Mixed-Race British Males and the Role of School Teachers: New Theory and Evidence by Remi Joseph-Salisbury Part V: Black Women and the Gendering of Blackness in Britain 12. Managing Diversity: Professional And Managerial Black African Women’s Work Lives in the UK Private Sector by Diane Chilangwa Farmer 13. Young Black British Women: Defining a Sense of Self In Relation to Hip Hop and Dancehall Musical Genres by Dionne Taylor 14. Learning from the Liminal: Conducting Health Research in African Caribbean Communities by Nicole Andrews Conclusion 15. Changing the Nature, Not Just the Face of the Academy by Kehinde Andrews
Biography
Kehinde Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University.
Lisa Palmer is Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University.
