AFAS Colloquium: "'Are We To Be Mauled Down Just Because We Are Black?': Racial Violence, Gender and the Politics of Mourning"

Against the backdrop of current debates in the U.S. about race & civil rights that have been prompted most recently by the Trayvon Martin case, this talk centers around the local and global racial politics surrounding the murder of an Antiguan man by the name of Kelso Cochrane in London during the late 1950s.  Kennetta Hammond Perry specializes in Atlantic World history with a particular emphasis on transnational race politics, empire, migration and movements for citizenship among people of African descent in Europe, the Caribbean and the United States.   Dr. Perry teaches courses in the department of History and the program in African & African American Studies.  She has published in the Journal of British Studies, Atlantic Studies and Twentieth Century British History and currently, she is completing a book manuscript tentatively titled London is the Place for Me:  Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Belonging which examines how Caribbean migrants in post World War II Britain appropriated and reconstituted imperial discourses of citizenship to fashion Black British identities and make claims upon their rights as British citizens.