Gipsy Ln
Oxford OX3 0BP
UK
As part of Black History Month at Oxford Brookes University, Dr Dave Ellis will explore the sentiments and experiences of Caribbean migrants popularly known as the Windrush generation. The session will describe the reactions they encountered from Britain’s white population and their own troubled sense of belonging to a nation that they had not previously encountered in its physical reality.
Dr Ellis will begin by outlining some of the historical drivers that lead to postwar migrations and draw upon some of the now seminal novels from writers such as Sam Selvon, George Lamming, AG Bennett and ER Braithwaite that represented the migrant experience in fictional form for a largely white British readership.
Dave Ellis will also look at narratives that deal explicitly with the black experience in Oxford drawing upon autobiographical work by Mervyn Morris and Caryl Phillips and (hopefully) more modern day accounts under current collection. Central to the session will be the question of ‘home’ and belonging as it has been narrated by the writers of the Windrush generation and those who have come after them.
Alongside his faculty role Dr Ellis writes and teaches on contemporary fiction and theory and on the growth of black British writing from the 1950s to the present day. He is also concerned with issues of widening participation and inclusive curriculum design.