The Black Atlantic: New Currents

2023 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Inspired by this landmark anniversary, the research strand The Black Atlantic: New Currents was founded at the Centre for Modern Studies at the University of York to bring scholars of Black Studies together for collaboration and exchange of ideas on the Black Atlantic as a concept, theory, and method of study.

The aim of the strand is to gather together groups of scholars working on Black Studies for interdisciplinary discussions on the state of the field. Our events focus on questions that were at the heart of Gilroy's work, aiming to consider both why the ideas and methods he introduces remain so enduring as well as how and why we might rework or revisit them.

We work together in the hope that taking a closer look at precisely what we are doing and why we are doing it will energise our research, foster connections across institutions and disciplines, and support us in continuing to engage in this work.

Some of the questions that are most foundational to this research strand include but are not limited to:

How do we define Black Atlantic literature today?
How does Black Atlantic writing continue to write back to slavery and its afterlives in our own moment?
How do contemporary geopolitics affect how we might theorise the Black Atlantic now? In what ways must we continue to complicate the relationship between race, history, and nationality when working on Black British literature?
When is Gilroy’s model less useful? How and when do we need to depart from this particular way of thinking about cultural production, influence, and exchange of ideas?
Where do we go from here? How might this concept evolve over time, and how do we imagine we might be able to use the idea next?