Corinne will talk about the fallout from the British National Trust's efforts to highlight black and enslaved lives in their great country houses in 2020, and she'll share some of the creative ways Black and white Britons are reclaiming and redefining those histories.

Join us for an insightful discussion with Corinne Fowler, Professor of English at Leicester University, on the legacy of colonialism in rural Britain. What's more, the United States is not the only nation where there's controversy about who controls how we tell our history. The ongoing racial controversy at Montpelier, the home of President Madison, reminds us that the difficult politics of race and equity extend even into the heritage tourism industry. Corinne co-edited the 2020 National Trust report on colonialism and historic slavery and is author of 'Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections' (Peepal Tree Press, 2020).Who gets to create our national histories? What role do house museums and historic sites play in our public conversations about race? Join our discussion with Corinne Fowler, author of Green Unpleasant Land for a look at how these questions are playing out in England’s country estates. What is at stake in our contemporary response to sensitive history and what are the implications for academic freedom?Ĭorinne Fowler is a Professor in the School of Arts and directs a child-led history and writing project called ‘Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted’. Britain’s recent ‘culture wars’ can be understood as a resurgent yet longstanding reluctance to explore the nation’s colonial past. Narratives are equally part of that legacy. Today, authors and poets are transforming the pastoral tradition in response to recent research into imperial Britain.Ĭolonialism’s cultural and economic legacy is not simply expressed by chinoiserie, statues, monuments, galleries, warehouses and stately homes. These works comment upon the relationship between colonial wealth and British landscapes, including Acts of Enclosure, country estates and the nation’s longest stone wall. Many influential pastoral works were produced during four hundred years of colonial rule. Literary tradition has played a formative role in this regard. The countryside is an important source of ideas about Britishness, and especially Englishness. It details the colonial links of country houses, coastlines, moorlands, woodlands and village graveyards. This lecture explores the repressed histories of rural Britain’s connections to transatlantic enslavement and the East India Company. Colonial aspects of Britain’s countryside and heritage sites in relation to sensitive history, national self-fashioning and academic freedom.

Corinne fowler green unpleasant land