The Life of John Bourden

Newberry Essays in Medieval and Early Modern Studies 7, 2013

A study on the origin and history of the legend of Prester John of the Indies

History Compass, 2017

This paper considers scholarship on political culture in Jamaica in 1865, the year of the Morant Bay rebellion. It situates the historiography of political culture in relation to three trends: first, an older historiography that envisaged the rebellion as indicative of nationalist consciousness; second, a more recent focus on the local politics of protest in the period 1838-1900; and third, another recent approach of explaining political culture through the dynamic relationship between metropole and colony. The paper then goes on to suggest that the latter two approaches are congenial to analysing the Underhill Meetings, a set of key political discussions prior to the rebellion which nevertheless have been underutilized in the historiography. The paper concludes by considering the possible linkages between the Underhill Meetings and the reform initiatives of the post-rebellion colonial state. Overall, it argues for the possibility of island-wide political consciousness without the need for ethno-nationalism or "imagined communities"

2021

The principal axes along which seventeenth and eighteenth-century Jamaica divided were those of colour and of freedom. By the late eighteenth century, it became axiomatic that all Protestant whites were free and that all blacks were either enslaved or marked out for discriminatory action as a result of not being white. But this situation was new: before the Seven Years’ War and the trauma of Tacky’s Revolt in 1760, a considerable proportion of the white population was unfree, including many indentured servants and, before 1718, convicts. This article estimates the numbers of unfree whites before the 1760s, allows as far as sources allow some voice to these poor whites, and examines their status as unfree people in a society increasingly oriented around principles of white supremacy. Over time, the political and economic position of ordinary whites dramatically improved as the principles of white racial superiority took hold in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. It meant tha...

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,36, 2: 227-242. Special Issue, Editor L. Roman

Much has been written about Stuart Hall’s intellectual and theoretical contributions especially after the mid-1960s. This interpretive and social biography places Stuart Hall’s life from 1932 to 1959 in a socio-historical context, beginning with his childhood in Jamaica and his early years in England. I draw on Hall’s own biographical reflections during the last years of his life and his writings about secondary schools and working-class youth from his insights as a teacher in South London, as well as his writings on identity and diaspora, as he reflects on the early years later in his life. By examining this less celebrated time, I hope to bring insights about pedagogy, identity, exile, nostalgia, and make connections between the early experiences and the more celebrated years of Stuart Hall as an outstanding educator and public intellectual.

African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 2018

Though Stuart Hall left Jamaica as a young man in 1951, reflections on his birthplace and its people's diaspora significantly shaped the method that would become a cultural studies. This essay examines the nature of this influence as evidenced in some of Hall's early and much later writing.

Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790-1914 , 2020

Book review of Victorian Jamaica by Tim Barringer and Wayne Modest (eds), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018

Reading Race, Collecting Cultures - The Roving Reader Files: 'From Jamaica to England', 2014

The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre is an open access University of Manchester facility. The blog 'Reading Race, Collecting Cultures' (www.aiucentre.wordpress.com) features on its website (www.racearchive.manchester.ac.uk). The Roving Reader Files category of blog posts is produced by Alison Newby (under the pseudonym The Roving Reader) in collaboration with Hannah Niblett (Collections Access Officer). The former provides the text and the latter provides the images. The Roving Reader Files are designed as public engagement materials. The intention is to introduce research skills and terminology to the general user/reader in an entertaining yet informative manner by revealing hidden stories, making unusual connections and sharing insights into using the Centre's collection for research. The five-part "From Jamaica to England" series traces the experiences of Jamaicans from differing social backgrounds as they migrated to England during the 1950s to 1980s, introducing along the way several key academic concepts: secondary sources and their role, particularly well-researched biographies; primary sources of differing types, such as traditional autobiographies and printed autobiographical accounts produced by adult literacy projects; how primary and secondary sources can combine to enrich a multifaceted picture; using internet-based resources to provide additional context to studies.