Bill Schwarz, BA (York)

Reader
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8522
email: b.schwarz@qmul.ac.uk

Research interests

Twentieth-century Caribbean writing
Postcolonialism
Twentieth-century British cultural and political history
Some aspects of historiography, cultural studies and media studies

Bill Schwarz’s research focuses on postcolonial history, with particular emphasis on the end of the British empire. Most of his recent work has concentrated on Caribbean writing of the twentieth century, both fiction and non-fiction. He also works on historiographical questions concerning the theoretical underpinnings of postcolonial history, and the relations between history and memory. The first part of his three-volume Memories of Empire is due from Oxford University Press in 2010. Most recently he has edited West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (2003); The Locations of George Lamming (2007); Caribbean Literature After Independence: the case of Earl Lovelace (2008); with Susannah Radstone, Mapping Memory (2010); and, with Cora Kaplan, James Baldwin. America and Beyond (2010).

He is currently working on a short book on US Civil Rights and Black Power from a British perspective; a volume entitled Conversations with Stuart Hall, and a new edited collection, with Rachael Gilmour, on End of Empire and the English Novel.

Since arriving at Queen Mary in 2004 Bill Schwarz has co-organized (with Rachael Gilmour and Javed Majeed) an event ‘Celebrating African Literature’ (with readings by Chinua Achebe); a symposium on Earl Lovelace; a large international conference (co-organized with Cora Kaplan) on James Baldwin; and an evening for Stuart Hall. In April 2010, with Susannah Radstone and Marina Warner, he is organizing at QM a one day workshop on ‘Mapping Memory’.

He is an editor of History Workshop Journal, New Formations and Visual Culture in Britain.

Publications since 2003

With Cora Kaplan, ‘America and beyond’ in Cora Kaplan and Bill Schwarz (eds), James Baldwin. America and Beyond (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)

‘Creolization West One. Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners’ in Jerry White and Andrew Whitehead (eds), London Fictions, forthcoming.

‘”Englishry”: the histories of G.M. Trevelyan’ in Catherine Hall and Keith McClelland (eds), Race and Nation in British History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010)

With Susannah Radstone, ‘Mapping memory’ in Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz (eds), Mapping Memory (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010)

‘Memory, modernity, temporality’ in Mapping Memory

‘Where is myself?’ in Bill Schwarz (ed), Caribbean Literature After Independence. The case of Earl Lovelace (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2008)

‘Being in the world’, in Caribbean Literature After Independence

'"Shivering in the noonday sun." The British world and the dynamics of "nativization"', in Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw and Stuart Macintyre (eds), Britishness Abroad: transnational movements and imperial cultures (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007)

'Locating Lamming', in Bill Schwarz (ed), The Locations of George Lamming, Warwick University Caribbean series (Oxford: Macmillan, 2007)

'Disorderly Politics', in Brian Meeks (ed), Stuart Hall: Culture, politics, race and diaspora (Kingston: Ian Randle; and London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2007)

'Ways of seeing', in Simon Faulkner and Anandi Ramamurthy (eds), Decolonization and Visual Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)

'The "poetics" of communication' in James Curran and David Morley (eds), Media and Cultural Theory (London; Routledge, 2006)

'C. L. R. James's American Civilization', Atlantic Studies, 2:1 (2005); republished in Christopher Gair (ed.), Beyond Boundaries. C. L. R. James and postnational studies (London: Pluto Press, 2006)

'Stuart Hall', Cultural Studies, 19:2 (2005)

'"We have met before."', introduction to George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile (London: Pluto Press classic reprint, 2005)
'End of empire', in Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Britain, 1939-2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)

'"Strolling spectators" and "practical Londoners": Remembering the imperial past', in Jo Littler and Roshi Naidoo (eds), The Politics of Heritage: the legacies of race (London: Routledge, 2005)

'"Not even past yet"', History Workshop Journal, 57 (2004)

'Media times, historical times', Screen, 45:2 (2004)

'C. L. R. James, George Lamming and the measure of historical time', Small Axe. A Caribbean journal of criticism, 14 (2003)

'Postcolonial Britain: Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette', Twentieth-Century British History, 14:3 (2003)

‘Crossing the seas’, in Bill Schwarz (ed), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain, Studies in Imperialism series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003)

‘George Padmore’ in West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (2003)

'The predicament of history', in West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (2003)

‘”Already the past”: memory and historical time’, in Susannah Radstone and Katharine Hodgkin (eds), Regimes of Memory, Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative (London: Routledge, 2003); republished as Memory Cultures: Memory, subjectivity and recognition (Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 2006)

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