The Race and Resistance Programme is delighted to celebrate the publication of the inaugural volume in its book series. Fighting Words: Fifteen Books that Shaped the Postcolonial World is edited by Dominic Davies, Erica Lombard and Benjamin Mountford.
Can a book change the world? Fighting Words examines how the book as a cultural form has fuelled resistance to empire in the long twentieth century. Through fifteen case studies (ranging from The Communist Manifesto to Long Walk to Freedom) this collection explores the ways in which books have circulated anti-imperial ideas, as they themselves have circulated as objects and commodities within regional, national and transnational networks. What emerges is a complex portrait of the vital and multifaceted role played by the book in both the formation and the form of anticolonial resistance, and the development of the postcolonial world.
Read more about the publication here.
At today's launch event, the editors - Dominic Davies, Erica Lombard and Benjamin Mountford - will each speak briefly about the book. This will be followed by responses and discussion led by an expert panel: Wale Adebanwi (Rhodes Professor of Race Relations; African Studies, Oxford); Elleke Boehmer (Professor of World Literature in English, Oxford) and Asha Rogers (Lecturer in Contemporary Postcolonial Literature, University of Birmingham). Tessa Roynon (University of Oxford) will chair the event.
Copies of the book will be on sale.
Our celebration also marks the formal launch of the Race and Resistance Programme's book series at Peter Lang.
All are welcome; a sandwich lunch will be served, and no registration is required.
Public Engagement with Research
Race and Resistance across Borders in the Long Twentieth Century
Contact name: Tessa Roynon
Contact email: tessa.roynon@rai.ac.ox.uk
Audience: Open to all
