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- Leeds Beckett University
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Submitting institution
- Leeds Beckett University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Summary impact type
- Cultural
- Is this case study continued from a case study submitted in 2014?
- No
1. Summary of the impact
Caribbean Carnival Cultures (CCC) has challenged the perceived barriers between artistic and academic approaches to carnival. It had the subsidiary aim of making the university a hospitable site for all the communities it serves. Zobel Marshall’s research has led to positive changes in (a) the practices of a number of carnival artists; (b) in the local African-Caribbean community’s engagement with the University, (c) in the understanding of Carnival as a resistant practice and whole-life culture. It has fostered positive partnerships with local council and a range of local, national and international arts organisations, and with a commercial company which is developing an online archive of Carnival practice.
2. Underpinning research
Zobel Marshall’s research examines how carnival manifests itself as a series of transatlantic diasporic cultural activities. It has a particular focus on traditional masquerade ( mas) and the trickster figure. As a member of the Harrison Bundey Mama Dread carnival troupe, she has also performed at the Leeds West Indian Carnival (LWIC) for over a decade, and she straddles what is often a difficult divide between practitioner, participant and academic communities.
Carnival is a resistant practice which distrusts and disrupts hegemonic institutions. Its own traditions and origins often mean that there is a deep suspicion of any institution, no matter how liberal, and that has often included universities. The risk these suspicions is that resources that universities can offer may be harder to reach for some communities. Zobel Marshall’s research was inspired by the will to bridge the gap between types of community, for the mutual benefit of both, to bring carnival artists and academics into meaningful and fruitful dialogue with one another. Her work is focused on exploring the roots of mas so that this artistic practice is valued as an aspect of intangible heritage, and on breaking down the perceived barriers between the academic analysis of carnival and carnival as an artistic activity.
A key finding of Zobel Marshall’s research is that the two ways of understanding an intangible culture (its practice and its critique) cannot succeed in isolation from each other . An example is her field work at Trinidad Carnival (February 2017) which directly fed into a Caribbean Quarterly publication ( 3.5) and several conference papers, and which inspired later work, including a major academic and practitioner conference in 2017, and elements of her most recent book on the American trickster figure, Brer Rabbit ( 3.1). For some of this work she has undertaken field work in the Caribbean, working with and alongside Carnival practitioners in the Midnight Robbers tradition, as well undertaking more conventional forms of literary critical and literary historical research.
The results of this her research give an expanded understanding of carnival as resistant artistic practice, a clearer sense of its traditions, and a politicised reading of the multiple meanings of African, Caribbean and American trickster figures in transatlantic practices of cultural resistance. Her work demonstrates how the trickster figure and trickster strategies became emblems or resistance, and methods for (cultural and literal) survival in Black Atlantic cultures in the face of slavery and its long aftermath. She shows how Caribbean and African American authors and performers use the trickster to counter reductive representations of black identity and to experiment with the construction of meaning, challenging the legacies of enslavement and colonialism. Her work offers a corrective to the oft-repeated Bakhtinian description of the Carnivalesque as a limited, transient and licensed form of resistance. Her work with Mas performers shows that Mas is in fact a whole way of life, not just a fleeting moment in time. She has also explored how trickster novels and performances embrace ambiguity, transformation and transcendence and in doing so offer listeners, readers and viewers practical and psychological methods to challenge the traumatic legacies of slavery and racism. Her work on the trickster has resulted in two monographs, Anansi’s Journey ( 3.2) and American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit ( 3.1), as well as a range of other publications in multiple formats, from the academic to the popular (e.g. 3.4).
3. References to the research
3.1 (2019) American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit. Rowman and Littlefield: London. [Listed in REF2]
3.2 (2012) Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance. University of the West Indies Press: Kingston. [Considered by Unit 36 in REF2014]
3.3 (2018) 'It's not all Sequins and Bikinis? Power, Performance and Play in the Leeds and Trinidad Carnival'. Book Chapter. Riggio, M (ed.). (Ian Randle Publishers). [Listed in REF2]
3.4 (2018) ‘Nothing but Pleasant Memories of the Discipline of Slavery”: The Trickster and the Dynamics of Racial Representation.’ Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies. 32, I. (Wayne State University Press). Available at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol32/iss1/4
3.5 (2019) [Edited collection] ‘Power, Performance and Play: Caribbean Carnival and the Cultural Politics of Emancipation’. Caribbean Quarterly, Dec 2019. Special Issue.
3.6 (2016) ‘Resistance Through ‘Robber Talk’: Storytelling Strategies and the Carnival Trickster in Caribbean Quarterly, Volume 62, 2. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2016.1203178
The sources listed here contain a mixture of some works which have been considered by previous REF panels, as well as some from the current REF cycle. All of these outputs show significance by their intervention in an under-researched cultural domain, rigour via the process of peer review, and originality in both approach and subject matter. Zobel Marshall’s significance as a researcher is also evidenced by the fact that major scholars in the Carnival field have solicited Zobel Marshall’s work, and have been keen to collaborate with her.
4. Details of the impact
Drawing on the insights from her research, since 2014, Marshall has organised several events which have brought new audiences into the university, and which have taken the university out to the community, which culminated in the Caribbean Carnival Conference (May 2017) which brought together the academy and the practitioner communities in a unique way. It attracted 160 participants from across the globe, featured 45 speakers alongside dance, design, poetry and masquerade workshops and a Civic Reception, and brought internationally renowned practitioners to Leeds.
The conference was designed so that academic research and research as practice intersected. A testimonial from Leeds West Indian Carnival co-founder, Hughbon Condor ( 5.4), made the point that the relationship between practitioners and academics was essential to a proper understanding what carnival means.
Both practitioners and academics make ongoing use of the insights they garnered from the conference, and from the networks it constructed. Testimony from one practitioner describes how, having read articles by Marshall and others: ‘I continue to learn from reading articles shared on this [Carnival Cultures web] page.’ (Marina Poppa, artist, 5.1, p.10); and another wrote: ‘The conference provided a fantastic opportunity to … I have kept in contact with some of the people I met there, [who] have become key in providing feedback on my developing work.’ (Adeola Dewis, artist, 5.1, p. 2). Angela Chappell (Arts Council England), describes professional benefits, which she uses in her daily activity: ‘it gave me more credibility in the [arts-management] sector and has been used by me in presentations at other universities and with ACE colleagues when talking about carnival nationally, regionally and internationally’. It had also helped to raise the profile of Arts Council England activities as they impact on BAME communities. ( 5.1, pp. 11-12)
Sandra Whyles, of Leeds based charity Chapeltown Arts, writes that the impact of the conference ‘has made a lasting impact on me as a woman of Caribbean heritage and an artist/community art facilitator.’ ( 5.1, p. 15) It also had a lasting effect on Trinidadian carnival theatre director Tony Hall, following his creation of a ‘Brexit devil’' troupe for the conference. Hall explains that he has changed his creative practice as a result; ‘We feel that the idea of utilizing aspects of the very versatile “devil masquerade” to penetrate and perform “fear”, personal and collective … is well on the way [to fruition].’ ( 5.1, p. 19) Trinidadian playwright and performer, Eintou Springer explains that the collaborative partnership and resulting publication has been a way of introducing her actors to the history and culture of carnival: ‘Our presence at the conference has given to our organisation and production an additional layer of respect.’ ( 5.1, p. ) Leeds carnival designer Rhian Kempadoo Miller also discusses the impact of her artistic input into the conference and how it has provided the platform to apply for an Arts Council grant to create her own carnival exhibition in 2019: ‘As part of the CCC I was commissioned to create two large banners for the evening event . … Without this commission … I [wouldn’t] have had the confidence to take this new path’ (5.1, p.8).
There have been two published outputs from the conference. The first, a special edition of the academic journal Caribbean Quarterly ( 3.6) is claimed as impact because it includes academic work in literary and cultural studies alongside more practice-based articles from carnival makers who are usually excluded from the academic press, showing the ways in which Marshall has helped to cross the practice/academic divide. The second is a book titled Celebrate! 50 Years of Leeds West Indian Carnival, authored by Guy Farrar, Tim Smith and Max Farrar (2017, 5.5) was conceived alongside the Carnival Cultures conference. The book addresses Carnival for a general readership, while also being of interest to carnival researchers, in line with the Carnival Cultures’ mission to link academic work with that of carnival arts practitioners, and to link both to the wider public.
The CCC website ( https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/research/centre-for-culture-and-the-arts/caribbean-carnival-cultures/), developed to support the conference organisation, is now a repository for information on carnival research, and advertising space for upcoming Caribbean and BAME artistic and academic events locally and nationally. It is a lasting platform for carnival artists and researchers to find out more about the field and showcase their work, whether academic or artistic.
The conference also had a media legacy: it was filmed by four film crews for local news and a documentary and garnered a range of press attention. It also has had an impact on local community events. The Chapeltown Literature Festival focused their annual literary event 'Word Junction' in September 2017 on carnival as a result of the conference and the CCC worked in partnership with Chapeltown Arts to deliver the events ( https://www.leedsinspired.co.uk/events/carnival-word-junction-chapeltown-arts). A ‘mini’ carnival conference event provided an opportunity for people in the local Chapeltown community to access the conference for free. It was well attended (over 80 participants) drawing a public which may not have been able to afford the conference fee or engaged with the university environment. The CCC also inspired the creation of a mas troupe focused on the tragic life of David Oluwale, a Nigerian migrant killed in Leeds by racist policing in 1968. The Mama Dread troupe took Oluwale’s story on the road (2018) and the making of the troupe and the carnival parade was captured in the documentary We are all migrants, dir. Rowena Baldwin ( 5.3), winner of the Hebden Bridge Film festival documentary prize (2018) which was selected for inclusion at the Trinidad Film Festival for 2020. The CCC continues to work in close collaboration with the David Oluwale Memorial Association , where Zobel Marshall is Vice Chair ( 5.7), which promotes anti-racism and raises awareness of homelessness and mental health problems.
A further legacy is that the digital media company British Online Archives, based largely on Zobel Marshall’s work, is beginning the process of documenting Carnival as part of its mission to make histories available. As Head of Content, Kathryn Rose writes of the urgent need for resources to teach a positive Black-British history, credits Zobel Marshall with providing some of the impetus for her company’s move to this field, and commissioned her as consultant in the making of a new archive (5.6)
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
- Emailed feedback on the Carnival Conference from individuals (Adeola Dewis, Enitou Pearl Springer, Calvin Beach, Guy Farrar, Rhian Kempadoo Millar, Marina Popper, Angela Chappell, Hughbon Condor, Sandra Whyles, and Tony Hall) who are carnival practitioners, artists, and arts managers about the effects of the Carnival conference on their practice and thinking. (This replaces Covid-affected interviews, scheduled for April 2020)
5.2 Video interviews with founders of the Leeds West Indian Carnival and other conference participants located at: https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/caribbean-carnival-cultures/
- Carnival Film, We are all migrants, dir. Rowena Baldwin. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10917942/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
Winner of the Hebden Bridge Film festival documentary prize in 2018; selected for the Trinidad Film Festival for 2020 (postponed owing to Covid).
5.4 Media coverage with North Leeds Life ( https://issuu.com/northleedslife/docs/2017_june_a – p. 18); BBC Radio 4 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07q7jl2); and The Yorkshire Evening Post.
Max Farrar, Guy Farrar and Tim Smith, (2017) Celebrate! Fifty Years Leeds West Indian Carnival. Arts Council Funding. Published by Jeremy Mill Publishing, Northern Arts Publications. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329170105_Celebrate_50_years_of_Leeds_West_Indian_Carnival
Testimonial from Kathryn Rose, head of content, British Archives Online.
David Oluwale Memorial Association – Remember Oluwale ( https://rememberoluwale.org/who.html).
- Submitting institution
- Leeds Beckett University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Summary impact type
- Societal
- Is this case study continued from a case study submitted in 2014?
- No
1. Summary of the impact
Based on his experiences of an adult diagnosis of autism via literary and cultural studies research into autism, McGrath’s impact has led to changes in (a) professional awareness within the NHS of obstacles faced by autistic adults in accessing their services (GP training films); (b) changes in how health professionals accommodate the needs of autistic patients (conference presentations; Q+A sessions; training events) (c) updating content of certified online courses on autism awareness to represent autistic perspectives (High Speed Training UK); (d) policy changes in diagnostic techniques and communication with service users; (e) public awareness that autistic people may succeed in Arts and Humanities, not just STEM domains as previously stereotyped (BBC radio broadcasts; The Conversation).
2. Underpinning research
McGrath’s adult autism diagnosis was a positive experience in enabling him to understand his condition and access support. However, as a literature scholar and poet, he felt alienated by pervasive scientific as well as cultural narratives that presuppose autistic people lack empathy and imagination and have little potential in arts and humanities subjects (Baron-Cohen, 2001). The stereotypes that pervade both public and professional understanding of autism leave some autistic adults less likely to receive diagnosis and support, simply because they enjoy the arts, and therefore score ‘low’ for autism characteristics on some standard diagnostic tools.
As a result of his experiences, McGrath undertook a concerted study of how autism is narrated across fiction, poetry, songs, television and film, as well as in leading psychiatric discourse. The resulting interdisciplinary book, Naming Adult Autism (2017) ( 3.2), is a cultural and medical history of the term, foregrounding the role of narrative in how autism is understood and diagnosed (there are no ‘biological’ tests available).
McGrath evaluates the context of Nazi ideology surrounding Hans Asperger’s 1944 study, showing how the Austrian paediatrician’s publications foregrounded his patients’ most culturally valuable talents: gifts in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths). McGrath traces how Asperger shaped subsequent psychiatric expectations that autistic people may succeed in STEM areas but show little understanding of the arts (Baron-Cohen, 2001). He highlights how this dehumanizing assumption about autistic people also shapes (and sensationalises) the condition’s portrayal across film, television, popular music (see also 3.1) and fiction. Cautioning against the term ‘representation’ when critiquing these cultural manifestations of the condition, McGrath shows how psychiatry and culture mutually conflate stereotypes of autistic ‘minds wired for science’ (Baron-Cohen, 2012) with little reference to the real experiences of autistic adults (and still less consideration that autistic people might engage with these texts).
The world’s most widely-disseminated autism questionnaire – used as both a diagnostic screening tool and the basis for the UK’s ongoing Channel 4/ PLOS-One national survey of autistic traits – is Baron-Cohen’s ‘Adult Autism Quotient Test’ (2001). Naming Adult Autism calls for this to be withdrawn from use by GPs and updated for use in national surveys. McGrath uncovers flaws in the test’s methodology and scoring, and hence its reliability. The questionnaire was created to help GPs decide whether to refer adults for autism assessment. Yet it served a simultaneous purpose: to support lucrative theories that mathematicians and scientists show more autistic traits than the general population. Answers suggesting an interest in numeracy are scored to raise the likelihood of autism – but answers indicating enjoyment of the arts are scored negatively. This major test and survey excludes creativity and imagination from the profile of what autism ‘means’.
McGrath traces the history of autism narratives from Asperger to the present, before contemplating its possible futures. If ‘preventing’ autism becomes possible via prenatal screening, the ways in which the condition is narrated in culture, as well as science, could influence decisions on abortion. Critical study of autism narratives is thus vital. Using literary critical approaches to both scientific and cultural texts, Naming Adult Autism seeks to promote further interdisciplinary studies of the subject. McGrath has sought wider audiences for his published research ( 3.3) because it is urgent that wider constituencies understand the breadth of the autism continuum, and the damaging nature of narrow stereotypes about the condition.
3. References to the research
McGrath, James (2019ebook; 2020 hard copy) ‘Doctor I’m damaged: Medical and Cultural Narratives of Nicky Hopkins and the Rolling Stones’ in Russell Reising (ed.) Beggars Banquet and the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Revolution: ‘They Call My Name Disturbance'. London: Routledge. (ADD DOI when available) [Listed in REF 2b]
McGrath, James (2017 hardback and ebook; 2019 paperback) Naming Adult Autism: Culture, Science, Identity. London: Rowman and Littlefield. [Listed in REF2b]
McGrath, James (2019) Not all Autistic People are Good at Maths and Science, Despite the Stereotypes. The Conversation, 3 April, 2019. https://theconversation.com/not-all-autistic-people-are-good-at-maths-and-science-despite-the-stereotypes-114128 [
[Readers: 17,990
Facebook shares: 11.3k
Tweets: 205 including Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes (the best-selling autism study to date) and Simon Baron-Cohen.
The significance of McGrath’s study of autism is that is the first cultural history of autism from the cultural field; it is therefore also original. Its rigour is signalled by its appearance from an academic press (which had a process of peer review as part of its publication), and its influence on discourses outside the immediate field of literary and cultural studies (for instance medicine and allied professions – e.g. a positive review in the BMJ).
4. Details of the impact
- Developing Professional Awareness; (b) Changes in Professional Practice; (c) Updating of Professional training Materials
McGrath has presented his work in a number of different forums. A Leeds Cultural Conversation hosted by the CCA at Leeds Beckett in December 2017 ( https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/events/past-events/2016/faculty-events/lcc-james-mcgrath/) was one of the early outings for the book, but earlier iterations had been presented to patient and service-user groups and to health professionals. He has also worked with this organisation to improve other elements of their practice, showing how their use of children’s toys in adult autism diagnostic assessments was highly problematic in diagnosing the condition in adults and modifying their practice, so that adults with autism are less humiliated by diagnosis, and more likely to come forward. He has also participated in training films for LADS ( 4.1) – an online resource for GPs and other health professionals in the Leeds City region (2018). And in 2017 he was instrumental in influencing modifications in the content and style the Leeds NHS Trust’s Autism Awareness online course (High Speed Training). As a result of his research he was also asked to join the Service Users Group for LADS to advocate for other adult autistic people.
(d) Policy changes in diagnostic techniques and communication with clients
In 2017, The Leeds Autism Diagnostic Service (LADS) responded to McGrath’s research, bought copies of his book as a training resource, and, though we cannot demonstrate a causal link, subsequently changed one of their key practices – they abandoned the use of the Baron Cohen Autism Quotient Questionnaire from their diagnostic suite (4.7).
In February 2016, while the book was still in preparation, McGrath presented to the Leeds and York Partnership NHS Trust, Autism Conference to the title ‘What is it like to be autistic?’ This presentation, given to an audience of NHS staff, combined personal reflections with academic research . It was announced at the conference that following McGrath’s critical observations of how clients are informed of diagnoses (with clients being ‘copied in’ to letters to their GPs), Leeds Autism Diagnostic Services were amending this policy, making both clients and GPs the nominal recipients of diagnostic confirmations. This matters because it means that adults with autism are being as adults, and directly addressed by the health professionals concerned.
(e) Public awareness of the artistic and creative potential of people with autism
McGrath has also set out to work with wider publics than the health professional domain. On 6 December 2017, he participated in an hour-long discussion of his book with Kelly-Anne Watson of Leeds Beckett Student Union. This talk was attended by members of the public as well as students and staff. The following day his Leeds Cultural Conversation – a public lecture, brokered in partnership with Leeds City Council and Palgrave’s Campaign for the Humanities was well attended, and has garnered 1,460 views on the YouTube archive of the footage. Extracts from this talk were used by LADS in their film suite of training materials (4.4) – see above. He has also appeared on BBC Radio Leeds to discuss autism in culture (April 2016, and December 2017). And he was an invited panellist at Autism Writes Back!, part of the International Literature Showcase (sponsored by Arts Council England, British Council and Writers’ Centre Norwich) at the 2018 Norfolk and Norwich Festival. His April 2019 article for The Conversation ( https://theconversation.com/not-all-autistic-people-are-good-at-maths-and-science-despite-the-stereotypes-114128 ) has been widely read, including by Professor Simon Baron Cohen – who tweeted that he agreed with McGrath’s premise ( https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/1114060989333483520)
In October and November 2019, building on this work with LADS, McGrath was also a speaker at two face-to-face training events for Leeds GPs and for other health professionals about the need to refocus some elements of standard practice and the damage done by the cultural stereotype of the STEM-focused autistic male. Assessments from these events suggest that the individuals encountering McGrath’s work were overwhelmingly likely to change their perspective and practices as a result . (See https://www.andrewsimscentre.nhs.uk/assets/downloads/programme-1568798579.pdf)
In short, McGrath’s work has built public awareness of autism as a range of conditions which defy the maths-geek stereotype, and of the need to look more widely at what the condition means for those who have it. The public awareness matters, but the more important impact is that he has also worked with practitioners in the Leeds City Region to modify their practices to better serve their users, and as a result his work has changed professional practices.
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
Leeds and York Partnership NHS Trust (2018). ‘It’s a wrap: James stars in autism film series’. Imagine: Leeds and York Mental Health & Learning Disability News. 2 (Spring), pp.6-7.
https://www.leedsandyorkpft.nhs.uk/get-involved/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/03/Imagine-Newsletter-Spring-2018.pdf [cover story of the magazine and interview about the book]
Fox, K. (2018) ‘Me- Autistic? As If…’ https://katefoxwriter.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/me-autistic-as-if/ [the official blog of poet, comedian and academic Dr Kate Fox]
High Speed Training: Autism Awareness Course (updated 2017)
https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/safeguarding-people/autism-awareness-training-course.aspx
Stansfield, Alison et al. (2017) ‘Are we good and are we safe? Measuring quality and assessing risk in adult autism diagnostic service.’ Advances in Autism. Volume 3.1, pp. 15-26. DoI 10.1108/AIA-03-2016-0008. Quotes McGrath, Box 1.
Feedback questionnaires from GP training events.
Review blog article by Anna Stenning, British Medical Journal. ( https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-humanities/2020/05/07/on-what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-problem/).
Testimonial Letters describing impact from LADS