Join CEMS to celebrate the publication of a blog series reflecting on Imtiaz Habib's Black Lives in the English Archives. This symposium brings together academics and archivists to discuss England's early modern Black History. There will be a series of presentations from researchers working at the forefront of early modern Black History and premodern race studies. This will be followed by tours around the London Metropolitan Archive's "Unforgotten Lives" exhibition.

Habib's Black Lives in the English Archives (2008) is a touchstone in premodern critical race studies and early modern Black History (1500-1677). This text not only traces the lives of early modern England's Black inhabitants but raises a set of methodological questions about how scholars can undertake this research. Our symposium brings together scholars from across Black British History, Premodern Critical Race Studies, and Early Modern Studies to reflect on this important text.

We will begin with a set of presentations and Q&A based on our blog series, published by the many-headed monster blog. This will be followed by a lunch and tours around the London Metropolitan Archive's "Unforgotten Lives" exhibition. This exhibition presents the stories of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous heritage who lived and worked in the city between 1560 and 1860 and are recorded in London’s archives.

This event is co-hosted by CEMS and the London Metropolitan Archives. It has been generously supported by the Royal Historical Society, the Society for Renaissance Studies, and KCL's Medicine and the Making of Race Project.

Agenda:

11.15-11.30: Doors Open
11.30-13.00: Presentations + Q&A
13:00-14:00: Lunch
14:00-15:00: Tours around ‘Unforgotten Lives’ Exhibition

Convenors

Rebecca Adusei is a PhD student at King's College, London. Her project locates and analyses depictions and characterisations of Sub-Saharan Africans in Early Modern literature and drama. Trained in Literary Studies, Rebecca's research has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Drawing together Literary Studies and History, she looks at Black individuals in the Early modern archives and scrutinises their characterisations in literature.

Jamie Gemmell is a historian of race and power in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic World. He is an AHRC-funded PhD student at King's College, London. His project traces how London life changed in the wake of England's development of racialised systems of enslaved labour across the Americas in the late seventeenth century. His project is titled “Reckoning with Race in Early Modern London, 1655-1712” and supervised by Prof. Laura Gowing and Prof. Miles Ogborn.