Author Jenny Mitchell to read from her novel-in-progress at Birkbeck

Writer Jenny Mitchell will read from her novel-in-progress, The Abundance of Water, at an event being held at Birkbeck this week, to mark Black History Month.

Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics Kinship and Community (BRAKC) is holding a literature symposium and reading, and asking whether mainstream romantic fiction can be used to re-examine the legacies of transatlantic enslavement.

Enslavement, Transmission and Trauma in Contemporary Fiction and Museum Practicewill be held on Wednesday 19 October, between 2pm and 5pm, in 43 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. Entry is free.

Jenny Mitchell will invite a discussion around the idea that the “slave masters” condemned their descendents to be traumatised by fear and shame in relation to the often-unexamined emotional legacies of enslavement.

Birkbeck academics Rachel Chonka and Chantal Quiqiune will then present papers on the representation of transatlantic trade and enslavement in contemporary British museums (Chonka) and the role of ‘spectral’ enslavement-related trauma in the fiction of French-Caribbean writer Maryse Condé (Quiquine).

The event will be followed by a film screening of controversial ‘plantation melodrama’Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975), from 6pm onwards, Room 421 Malet Street.