Dr Ryan Hanley
by chrismoffat
Affiliation: Salvesen Junior Fellow, New College, Oxford
Location: Oxford
Contact: ryan.hanley@new.ox.ac.uk
Research Description: I work primarily on black British writing, c.1770-1830. Black people writing during this period are often understood to have been primarily or exclusively interested in questions surrounding slavery and ethnicity. I think this tends to homogenise readings of a hugely diverse body of work. In reality, authors like Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, Boston King, John Jea, Robert Wedderburn and Mary Prince were involved in, and wrote about, almost every aspect of British social, political and cultural life. Through investigating the social, professional and confessional networks in which these authors were key actors, we can recognise the diversity and scope of early black British writing. I am currently writing a monograph on this subject.
Research Keywords: Black history; writing; literature; poetry; autobiography; biography; life writing; radicalism; religion; methodism; calvinism; britain; british; eighteenth century; nineteenth century.
Countries and Regions of Interest: Britain; Caribbean; North America.
Publications:
As Editor:
Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley and Jessica Moody (eds.), Little Britain’s Memory of Slavery: Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin’ (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press 2016) [Forthcoming].
As Author:
‘“There to sing the song of Moses”: John Jea in Liverpool and Portsmouth’, in Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley and Jessica Moody (eds.), Britain’s Memory of Slavery: Local Nuances of a ‘National Sin’ (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016) [Forthcoming, 2016].
‘Calvinism, Proslavery and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’, Slavery & Abolition, 36:2 (2015).
‘The Royal Slave: Nobility, Diplomacy and the “African Prince” in Britain, 1748-1752’, Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction [Forthcoming, 2015].
Links:
Twitter: @ryanjhanley