Key Readings
Summer 2021
Join a conversation with authors Sita Balani, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Adam Elliott-Cooper, and Kerem Nişancioğlu on 5 May 2021, 12.30 pm on Teams.
Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State, London: Pluto Press, 2021.
By Gargi Bhattacharyya, Adam Elliott-Cooper, Sita Balani, Kerem Nişancioğlu, Kojo Koram, Dalia Gebrial, Nadine El-Enany, Luke De Noronha
You can download part of the introduction to Empire's Endgame here. See also the group's response to the Sewell Report.Introduction to Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (2nd edition). London: Palgrave, 1978, 2013.
by Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, Brian Roberts.
Empire's Endgame was inspired in part by this 1970s cultural studies classic.
'Without Mourning: On Ritual' by Sita Balani
Spring 2021
Jay Bernard, Surge. London: Vintage, 2019.
Collection of resources for reading and discussing SurgeJay Bernard's extraordinary debut is a fearless exploration of the New Cross Fire of 1981, a house fire at a birthday party in which thirteen young black people were killed.
Dubbed the 'New Cross Massacre', the fire was initially believed to be a racist attack, and the indifference with which the tragedy was met by the state triggered a new era of race relations in Britain. Tracing a line from New Cross to the 'towers of blood' of the Grenfell fire, this urgent collection speaks with, in and of the voices of the past, brought back by the incantation of dancehall rhythms and the music of Jamaican patois, to form a living presence in the absence of justice.A ground-breaking work of excavation, memory and activism - both political and personal, witness and documentary - Surge shines a much-needed light on an unacknowledged chapter in British history, one that powerfully resonates in our present moment.
*Winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry**Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award; T.S.Eliot Prize; Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Dylan Thomas Prize; RSL Ondaatje Prize; John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize**Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2020*
Autumn 2020
- Barbara Christian, 'The Race for Theory' Cultural Critique, no. 6, 1987, pp. 51-63. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1354255. Accessed 4 Sept. 2020. [alternate link here]
- Pages 101-115 from Philip E. Agre, 'Surveillance and capture: Two models of privacy', The Information Society, 10: 2 (1994): 101 - 127 DOI: 10.1080/01972243.1994.9960162 [alternative link here]
- Chuang, 'Social Contagion'
- Join our discussion of the readings on Wednesday 28th October, 1-2pm, on Microsoft Teams: click here.
- For audiovisual introductions to the Autumn key readings, click here.
