Past Events

JOAN ANIM-ADDO is a writer and scholar. Her publications include Janie, Cricketing Lady (poetry); Imoinda (libretto); Longest Journey: A History of Black Lewisham, and Touching the Body: History, Language and African-Caribbean Women’s Writing. Currently Emeritus Professor and Director of the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, she is also the UK’s first Black Professor of Literature and the Humanities. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Her most recent publication is This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books (co-written). She is Founder-Editor of Blacklines, the Journal of Black British Writing, and Editor-in Chief of the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Black British Writing, 3 Volumes (forthcoming). This event offers a sharing of Joan's paper, “Taking Black British Literature to the Deconstruction Table,” presented at the 8th “Derrida Today” Conference, Athens, Greece, June 2024. The essay interrogates what might be gained by exploring Black British Literature through Derridean lens as framed by Elisabeth Weber’s assertion that “Deconstruction is Justice” (2005). Centralizing women’s voices, I discuss the UK’s higher education in terms of including Katherine McKittrick black geographies, and draw on Jacqueline Crooks’ Fire Rush (2023) and Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton (2019) to contribute a literary focus to the paper. This essay has been accepted for publication, but is yet to be released. In order to access the paper prior to the event, attendees will receive an email after submitting an RSVP. Please RSVP here: https://forms.gle/RGD3eRyexsopNqeX6