The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
- Submitting institution
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Queen Mary University of London
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 1469
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.1017/9781108164146
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- ISBN
- 9781107195448
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- January
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing was commissioned to Nasta. Co-edited with Stein, the book is the first to chart the uneven evolution of this field from the eighteenth century to the present. Nasta’s substantive knowledge as Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Wasafiri 1984-2019, as well as her pioneering research in black, Asian, and diasporic studies, was critical in the formation of the history’s aims, structure, methodology and content. Co-authored with Stein, the introduction offers a rationale for its methodology, the creation of a ‘history’ which revises as it documents the challenging literary, cultural and geographical intersections of a frequently contested body of British writing.
Apart from commissioning the volume’s thirty-nine chapters, editorial input involved: inviting 40 international experts to contribute, drafting abstracts, suggesting chapter titles, proposing coverage, writing section prefaces, content editing chapters as well as bibliography compilation. To introduce coherence and foster critical debate, the editors led a 3-day research symposium with the contributors in 2016 (Muenster).
Nasta’s longstanding research is key to the volume’s coverage in terms of genre (including film, television, drama, non-fiction, life-writing) and its identification of new research areas (e.g. the little-known cultural networks and the highlighting throughout of material contexts). Her 2002 monograph, Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain pointed to a continuum of black and Asian writing from the 18th century to the present. Subsequent research as Principal Investigator on two AHRC-funded projects (Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad 1850-1950 and Beyond the Frame: India in Britain) directly fed into the volume’s analytical structure and content, especially in Part II (e.g. pre-1945 ‘Global Locals: Making Tracks at the Heart of Empire’ section, including Nasta’s co-authored chapter ‘Between the Wars: Caribbean, Pan-African and Asian Networks’ (7,160 words).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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