UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE
Reference No RS/08/55
Applications are invited for a part-time MPhil/PhD funded studentships in the School of Journalism, Media and Communication. The bursary is tenable for up to 6 years (subject to satisfactory progress) with an expected commencement date of 1 October 2009. The bursary will cover the cost of tuition fees at UK/EU rates plus project consumables. International applicants may apply but will be required to pay the difference between UK/EU and International fees.
We welcome applications to undertake the following project:
Memorials, Memorialisation, Visual Arts and the Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (for more details of project – see below)
Applicants should have, or expect to receive, an upper second class or first class honours degree or an MA in a related discipline.
Informal enquiries (project related) may be directed Dr Alan Rice tel:+44 1777 893024, or email [log in to unmask] ).
Requests for an application pack (quoting the project reference number RS/08/xx) should be directed to the Graduate Research Office. Tel +44 (0)1772 894287 or e-mail [log in to unmask]
Closing date: Monday 6 July 2009
Memorials, Memorialisation, Visual Arts and the Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
In the wake of the 2007 Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire there has been increased discussion of and interest in the visual representation of slavery throughout the Circum-Atlantic and the ways in which the slave trade has been memorialised both in public, municipal and gallery spaces. In particular in the run up to and subsequent to the commemoration exhibitions and memorials have been staged and erected both in Britain and more widely in Europe. Rice has been involved in debates and activities around these art works, exhibitions and memorial sculptures through the Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project and Abolished? in Lancaster, at the Whitworth in Manchester as well as through the Centre for the Study of International Slavery in Liverpool etc. etc. including working with Lubaina Himid whose writings and continuing art projects on the subject will provide case studies for the project. The student project would interview artists, academics and curators involved in these activities and others further afield, read theoretical and art historical background on race, slavery and memory and investigate the multifarious ways that slavery and race have been interpreted and represented in these myriad interventions. They would chart the different responses to slavery, contextualise them in terms of black artistic practice and the wider history of memorialisation using comparison to other so-called “limit events” such as the Holocaust. They would have access to the contacts built up by Rice and other team members such as Himid through their relationships with curators, community groups and membership of important research centres which would enable access to archives that are beginning to be built up around this topic and indeed to help build archives around Rice and Himid’s projects. The final project will be limited to contemporary responses to slavery and its memorialisation, using recent memorials such as those in Lancaster and Docklands in London as markers of new attempts to come to terms with the history of Transatlantic slavery.