JAMES WILLIAMS AND THE LITERARY AND ARCHIVAL CONSTRUCTION OF SLAVERY: DECOLONIAL DIGITAL HUMANITIES, PEDAGOGIES OF UNSILENCING, AND THE JAMAICAN APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM

Nazua Idris

In this dissertation, I argue for decolonizing nineteenth-century British literary studies from the ground up, encompassing the curriculum, archives, scholarly textual editing, and pedagogical practices in high school and university settings. My project turns to James Williams’s "A Narrative of Events, since the First of August, 1834" (1837), a firsthand testimonial narrative by an Afro-Caribbean formerly enslaved Black apprentice from nineteenth-century Jamaica, to illustrate how the bureaucracies of colonial governance in Britain conspired not only to maintain many of the most oppressive aspects of slavery under the apprenticeship system but also to silence the stories of the enslaved people who suffered the most. My project shows how the history of this effort by colonial governments in the nineteenth century continues to impact the preservation and teaching of these stories of survival today. Thus, centralizing Williams’s Narrative, each chapter of this project discusses how Britain’s colonial legacy has shaped literary studies, slavery archives, and pedagogies, and demonstrates how we can decolonize each field by centering the voices, lived experiences, and epistemologies of formerly enslaved and colonized people. This is a non-traditional, hybrid dissertation project that includes a written thesis, a digital archive of the narratives of enslaved Black apprentices, and a digital edition of James Williams’s "A Narrative of Events." As this dissertation engages with literary studies, archival studies, scholarly textual editing, and English education, each chapter embodies the academic style of each respective field. Chapter One presents a literary analysis of Williams’s "A Narrative of Events" in relation to postcolonial and decolonial approaches to literary studies, critiquing the exclusionary practices prevalent in nineteenth-century British literary studies. Chapter Two examines decoloniality in nineteenth-century slavery archives and discusses the development of a digital archive that I created by combining digital humanities (DH) methodology with the conventions of archival studies. Chapter Three explores decoloniality in scholarly textual editing and outlines the development of a digital edition of Williams’s "Narrative" that I designed by combining digital humanities (DH) methodology with the conventions of scholarly textual editing. Chapters Four and Five discuss two Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved qualitative studies. Following the conventions of English education research, I employ empirical components in these chapters by collecting and analyzing data from students’ responses from my own pedagogical practice and from the responses of the ELA teachers who participated in a book-club study I conducted.

JAMES WILLIAMS AND THE LITERARY AND ARCHIVAL CONSTRUCTION OF SLAVERY: DECOLONIAL DIGITAL HUMANITIES, PEDAGOGIES OF UNSILENCING, AND THE JAMAICAN APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM

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