Anglophone Political Cultures Research Group

Anglophone Political Cultures Research Group

Anglophone Political Cultures is an interdisciplinary research group that combines elements of disciplines like Cultural Studies, History, and Politics to explore national, transnational, and comparative approaches to the history and political cultures of the English-speaking world. The group consists of scholars based in the English section at the Department of Language and Literature and a network of scholars from other universities in Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom who work on Anglophone political cultures in some shape or form.

Scholars in the group are involved in individual and collaborative projects on, for example:

  • Political Writing and Print Cultures
  • Political Parties in Britain and Europe
  • Ideologies of Conservatism and Christian Democracy
  • The History of the British Empire and Decolonisation
  • Life Writing and Autobiography
  • Literature and the Politics of the Past in Southern Africa

Research

Research

Recent Activity

Recent Activity

Workshop 2: Presentations:

 

  • Gary Love (NTNU, Trondheim): ‘The British and Scandinavian Conservative parties and the building of the new centre-right internationalism in Europe, 1949-78.’
  • Pepijn Corduwener (Utrecht University): The DC as people’s party and the consolidation of Italian democracy, 1943-1963’
  • Vesa Vares (University of Turku): ‘“Finlandized” Conservatives? National Coalition Party seeking domestic and foreign political credibility in Finland and simultaneously maintaining Western contacts from the 1960s to the 1980s’
  • Niklas Olsen and Jesper Vestermark Køber  (University of Copenhagen): ‘Youth Revolt from the Right: Danish Conservatism goes Libertarian in the late 1970s and early 1980s’’
  • Johan Strang (University of Helsinki)’‘Conservatism in the other – social democratic - Europe’

     

 

Autobiography After Empire: Individual and Collective Memory in Dialogue’ presentation by Astrid Rasch

Workshop 1: Conservatism and Christian Democracy in Britain and Europe after 1945.

Presentations:

 

  • Gary Love, ‘Introduction’ (NTNU, Trondheim).
  • Martina Steber, ‘British Conservatism and German Christian Democracy. Comparing the Incomparable?’ (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich).
  • Torbjörn Nilsson, ‘Conservative alternatives in Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany after 1945: Christian Democracy, Liberalism or Populist Alliance in a changing political landscape’ (Södertörn University, Stockholm).
  • Martin Conway, ‘Christian democracy in Europe, 1945-1995: the success of conservatism?’ (University of Oxford).

Workshop 1: Political publishing, intellectual debate, and ideology.

Presentations:

  • Gary Love, ‘Introduction’ (NTNU, Trondheim).
  • Emily Jones, ‘Conservative & Unionist book writing c. 1900-1918’ (University of Manchester).
  • Gemma Clark, ‘Mass political communication during the Irish Revolution, c1912–23 – republican ideology and electioneering’ (University of Exeter).
  • Gary Love, ‘Conservative political writing in the age of “Labour’s literary dominance”, c.1930-64’ (NTNU, Trondheim).
  • Dean Blackburn, ‘Penguin Specials and the history of ideas’ (University of Nottingham).
  • Lise Butler, ‘New Society, Social Science and Social Democracy in Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s’ (City, University of London).
  • Ben Jackson, ‘Scottish political and cultural magazines in the late twentieth century – nationalist political publishing in Scotland’ (University of Oxford).
  • Richard Toye, ‘Print, paratexts, and politics: rethinking readership and reputation’ (University of Exeter).

‘Becoming Postcolonial: Memory Dialogues in Post-Imperial Autobiography’ presentation by Astrid Rasch

Workshop 2: The Politics of the Past: Exploring Pasts in Zimbabwe's Presents

Presentations:

  • Astrid Rasch, Introduction: The Politics of the Past: Exploring Pasts in Zimbabwe's Presents
  • Petina Gappah and Elleke Boehmer in Conversation, ‘Literature and the Politics of the Past in Southern Africa’
  • Pedzisai Maedza, ‘Chimurenga File(s): Memory, Parody and Politics in Zimbabwe’
  • Duduzile Ndlovu ‘The contested storying of Gukurahundi in South Africa: a comparison between film and song’
  • Jocelyn Alexander, ‘The ‘dissident’ as actor and symbol’
  • Shari Eppel, ‘Exhumations as performance: bones as provokers and invokers of the past in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe’
  • Shadreck Chirikure, ‘The use and abuse of ancient and colonial pasts in contemporary Zimbabwe’
  • Katja Uusihakala, ‘Vulnerable Pasts: Social worth and selective silences in a public apology to British child migrants’
  • Ruramisai Charumbira, ‘Ukuba ngu Muntu / Kuve Munhu, On Being Human, an African’
  • Stefan Helgesson, ‘War and Peace in South-Eastern Africa: The Contact Zone Revisited’
    Julia Willén, ‘Place and Time for Critical Whiteness: On Lessing’s “The Old Chief Mshlanga”’
  • Lena Englund, ‘Documenting the End of an Era: Nonfictional Accounts of the Final Weeks of Mugabe’s Presidency’

‘Becoming Postcolonial’ presentation by Astrid Rasch

Publications

Publications

Rasch, Astrid. (2021) ‘Anxious Reading: Interrogating Selective Empathy in Trauma Memoirs’. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies

Rasch, Astrid. (2021) ‘Subversion or Identity Work? Tracing the Reception of Zimbabwean Counter-Narrative Memoirs. Journal of Southern African Studies. vol. 47 (5).

Rasch, Astrid; Niemi, Minna Johanna; Alexander, Jocelyn. (2021) ‘Reading Repression and Resistance in Zimbabwean Literature’. Journal of Southern African Studies. vol. 47 (5).

Love, Gary. (2020) 'Making a ‘New Conservatism’: The Tory Reform Committee and Design for Freedom, 1942–1949'. English Historical Review. vol. 135 (574).

Love, Gary. (2020) ‘Real Toryism’ or Christian democracy? The political thought of Douglas Jerrold and Charles Petrie at the New English Review, 1945–50. Historical Research. vol. 93 (261).

Rasch, Astrid. (2019) ‘“Keep the balance”: The Politics of Remembering Empire in Post-Colonial Britain’. Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. vol. 7 (2).

Ward, Stuart; Rasch, Astrid (eds). (2019) Embers of Empire in Brexit Britain. Bloomsbury Academic (ISBN 9781350113794)

Love, Gary. (2018) A ‘Mixture of Britannia and Boadicea’: Dorothy Crisp’s Conservatism and the Limits of Right-Wing Women’s Political Activism, 1927–48. Twentieth Century British History. vol. 30 (2).

Rasch, Astrid. (2018) ‘Postcolonial Nostalgia: The Ambiguities of White Memoirs of Zimbabwe’. History and Memory. vol. 30 (2).

Rasch, Astrid. (2018) ‘The Family Connection: White Expatriate Memoirs of Zimbabwe’. Journal of Southern African Studies. vol. 44 (5).

Rasch, Astrid (ed). (2017) Life Writing After Empire. Routledge (ISBN 978-1-138-22321-9)

Rasch, Astrid. (2016) ‘“This Union-Jacked Time”: Memories of Education as Post-Imperial Positioning’. Life Writing. vol. 13 (2).

Love, Gary. (2014) The Periodical Press and the Intellectual Culture of Conservatism in Interwar Britain. The Historical Journal. vol. 57 (04).

Love, Gary. (2012) Whig Lessons, Conservative Answers: The Literary Adventures of Sir J.A.R. Marriott. Brave New World. Imperial and Democratic Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars.

Love, Gary. (2009) 'The British Movement, Duncan Sandys, and the Politics of Constitutionalism in the 1930s'. Contemporary British History. vol. 23 (4).

Love, Gary. (2007) '"What's the Big Idea?": Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists and Generic Fascism'. Journal of Contemporary History. vol. 42 (3).

Publications

Teaching

  • ENG3450 History, Society, and Culture : New Times? Britain in the 1980s?
  • ENG2455 History and Politics: Memory Politics After Empire
  • ENG1004 American society and politics – campus course
  • ENG6011 Cultural Studies – online course as part of Take Credit
  • ENG6017 Cultural Studies – further education for teachers as part of KfK/English I
  • ENG1404 History and Politics: Britain and the World after 1945

Future Plans

We are in the process of establishing a regular online workshop series where members of the group, graduate students, and invited guests will present works in process.