Research in Postcolonial Literatures in Wales and Canada

Research in this group

Members;

The five staff in this area are among the first to approach issues of national identity in the context of postcolonial and postmodern theory. They do so by exploring an alternative route to the prevailing paradigm of African and Indian imperial experiences. Both Canada and Wales have bilingual populations, whose national identities have been made and recast in the face of culturally-dominant, Anglophone, and economically-powerful neighbours. Three staff focus on Wales (Brown, Davidson, Gregson) and two on Canada (Edwards, Hiscock). All have one or more books out on these issues.

Their work is supported by the University's Welsh Institute for Cultural and Social Affairs. Here, a senior professor who directs the Institute and a full time, experienced research administrator aim to:

Support research into national identities, and minority cultures and languages
Explore the nature of multi-cultural and post-devolutionary Britain, using the Welsh experience
Bring together academics and practitioners whether in culture or in policy

The research groups most relevant to the School are those in diasporas, notions of nationhood, and bilingualism. In a specifically literary context the R.S. Thomas Study Centre (co-director: Brown) was established in 2000. This houses archives relating to the poet (including rare editions, a large collection of criticism, reviews, and interviews, and books from R. S. Thomas's personal library; in 2006-7 UWB spent £25,000 adding to what is the only extensive manuscript collection of Thomas. The first of two doctoral students attached to the Centre (funded by a University Studentship) was awarded her degree in 2004. Her thesis will be published by the University of Wales Press, and she now holds a full-time lectureship at Swansea University. The Centre was host to an American Fulbright Scholar, David Lloyd (Syracuse, NY) in 2002, and regularly receives visits from students and scholars from across the UK and overseas.

Staff disseminate this research at international and national levels:

Edwards organized a conference on 'Denmark and the Black Atlantic' in Copenhagen (2006).
Also in the area of travel, in 2002 the School hosted the Eleventh Annual Congress on Virginia Woolf, 'Voyages out, Voyages home', the first to have been held outside America.
From 2000-2002 Hiscock ran an annual series of conferences on 'Representations of Canadian Life', drawing about 30 scholars, supplemented in 2003 by an international Canadian Studies conference on 'Engaging the Enemy: Canada in the 1940s'.
Brown organized the 17th annual conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English, 'Wales at War' (2005), drawing some 60 delegates from across Europe.
Since its founding in 1995 Brown has been the editor of Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays (11 volumes to date, c. 220 pp each). Brown was also on the editorial board of New Welsh Review from its inception in 1988 to 2004.