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SUMMARY:Tracing the Nigerian Civil War through Heinemann’s African Writers Series archives: an undergraduate research project and its afterlife
DESCRIPTION:Dr Sue Walsh and Ms Temiloluwa Ogdugbesan\nTracing the Nigerian Civil War through Heinemann’s African Writers Series archives: an undergraduate research project and its afterlife \nThe Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP) is pleased to host this free online event which is open to all. Please register your interest to receive the Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/182683369877 \nAs is well known\, Heinemann Educational Books’ African Writers Series was particularly significant for the development of postcolonial literature in Africa and when the series was first established in 1962\, Nigerian authors\, including its editorial adviser Chinua Achebe\, were among its most significant contributors. But\, when in 1967\, civil war broke out as the south-eastern part of Nigeria (Biafra) attempted to secede from the rest of the country\, Heinemann was left in a potentially difficult position; publishing a significant number of authors from the secessionist side of the conflict (including Achebe himself) whilst trying to maintain its offices in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. \nThis summer I supervised an undergraduate research project funded by the University of Reading\, in which a second-year student\, Temiloluwa Odugbesan\, conducted research into where and how the civil war was discussed in the papers of the publishers (held in the Heinemann archives at the University of Reading’s Special Collections) during the civil war period (1967-70). The purpose of the project was two-fold: 1) to conduct some initial research that would support my longer term research into how Heinemann handled the implications of the civil war for its business in Nigeria; 2) to introduce undergraduate students and others not familiar with the AWS archives to them\, through the production of a short series of blogs and an online exhibition to be hosted on the University of Reading’s Special Collections website. \nThis is the story of that research project\, what Temiloluwa found and how she put together an engaging set of blogs and a fascinating online exhibition intended to introduce people to some of the greats of Nigerian literature\, to the African Writers Series Archives\, and to give some brief background to the civil war and its implications for the publishers at Heinemann and their authors. \nSue Walsh \nI’m a lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. My original specialism is in children’s literature and theory and I am a member of the Graduate Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature\, Culture\, Media\, and I have published a monograph in this area (Kipling’s Children’s Literature: Language\, Identity and Constructions of Childhood\, was published in 2010 by Ashgate) \nMore recently however\, having been born in New Bussa in north-western Nigeria in 1967\, I have always been interested in Nigerian literature and particularly in the literature of the civil war period. I teach a third year module in Nigerian prose literature (from Achebe to Adichie) and have become more and more engrossed in archival work\, looking into what Heinemann’s papers can tell us about this period and its impact on the authors and publishers. \nTemiloluwa Odugbesan \nI’m a current 3rd Year Spanish and Economics BA student and\, during the summer of my second year\, I undertook a unique research project ‘Tracing the Nigerian Civil war through Heinemann’s African Writers Series’. \nMy name is Temiloluwa and I am one of the Nigerian speakers for this event\, which you may have been able to tell by my devastatingly wonderful name. I look forward to sharing my research project with you because not only is it relevant but also because the African Writers Series holds a special place in my heart as it celebrates Nigerian literature alongside many other great works. Growing up I have always appreciated literature and to explore it from an indigenous perspective this past summer has been amazing\, you truly get to see how every writer has their story. \nFurthermore\, through understanding the context this adds to the ambience and feel of the writers – more to come in the talk!
URL:https://research.reading.ac.uk/research-blog/event/tracing-the-nigerian-civil-war-through-heinemanns-african-writers-series-archives-an-undergraduate-research-project-and-its-afterlife/
CATEGORIES:Heritage & Creativity
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SUMMARY:Vanished: Hope and Histories of Extinction
DESCRIPTION:History Department Annual Stenton Lecture 2021 \nDr Sadiah Qureshi (University of Birmingham): ‘Vanished: Hope and Histories of Extinction’ \nWe are so familiar with extinction that it is hard to imagine a world where nothing was believed to be extinct. We are accustomed to stories of extinction from playing with toy dinosaurs to museum visits. For decades\, anyone visiting the Natural History Museum in London immediately encountered\, Dippy the dinosaur. From July 2017\, visitors are greeted by ‘Hope’\, the blue whale. She dives from the ceiling towards the crowds in an astonishingly beautiful reminder of the fragility of the natural world in the Anthropocene. Below her\, in the alcoves of the vast entrance hall\, visitors can see collected specimens of extinct and endangered species\, from the mastodon to coral. \nYet\, the science of extinction is modern. Up until the eighteenth century\, well-known losses\, such as the Mauritian dodo\, were attributed to human actions. In the later eighteenth century\, working from the extensive natural history collections in Paris\, George Cuvier argued that fossilised elephantine beasts such as the Mastodon were a different species to their living relatives. This research helped establish the notion that extinction was both endemic and widespread in earth’s history and quickly underpinned new ideas about loss and endangerment in the modern world. In the twentieth century\, the rise of ecology and conservation movements in the 1960s and 1970s created a new awareness of anthropogenically-induced species loss and we are currently witnessing a new era of activism with the emergence of Extinction Rebellion. \nWe now know that rapacious exploitation of natural resources is directly contributing to the habitat loss\, overconsumption and pollution underpinning many modern extinctions\, from the great auk to the Yangtze dolphin. For millenia\, each loss permanently diminished the natural world. Yet\, within the last decade\, the serious prospect of de-extinction has arisen. Scientists are racing to resurrect lost species while their supporters dream of mammoths roaming the earth once more. \nDrawing on scientific writings\, activist art and museum collections and displays\, this Stenton Lecture will explore how naturalists established the notion that extinction was an endemic natural process and the lasting legacies of this shift for current debates about climate change\, the ‘sixth extinction’ and the future of our planet.’ \n  \nDr Qureshi’s lecture will be accompanied by a Stenton workshop in partnership with the British Museum entitled: ‘Collecting and Nineteenth-century Empires’. \nConfirmed speakers include Mirjam Brusius (German Historical Institute); Kate Nichols (Birmingham); Ricardo Roque (Lisbon); Subhadra Das (Galton Collections\, UCL)\, Marenka Thompson-Odlum (Glasgow/ Oxford)\, Amara Thornton (UCL)\, as well as speakers from the British Museum.
URL:https://research.reading.ac.uk/research-blog/event/vanished-hope-and-histories-of-extinction/
LOCATION:Online event
CATEGORIES:Heritage & Creativity
ORGANIZER;CN="Dr%20Rohan%20Deb%20Roy%2C%20History%20Department":MAILTO:r.debroy@reading.ac.uk
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