Department of American Studies: University of East Anglia - UEA

Department of American Studies: University of East Anglia - UEA The Department of American Studies at the UEA. #1 in the Guardian University Guide 2015! Make sure to follow us on twitter too: .

This is the official page for the Department of American Studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Here, you can keep in touch with what's going on in the school and keep up to date with Containing Multitudes, our blog.

04/06/2025

Check out one of the blogs our wonderful student, Henry Lematia, wrote for the MA module, Race and Resistance. The rubric asked that students write a blog post concerning a text or an issue relevant to their final essays. Henry wrote about the renaming of streets in Kampala, Uganda asking broader questions about the decolonisation of urban spaces and whether such acts are a process of reclaiming Uganda histories.

Please be aware that this blog contains discussions including racism, sexism, abuse and violence in various forms and may provoke a range of feelings and affects for you.

Decolonizing Urban Spaces: The Politics of Renaming Roads in Kampala, Uganda

Figure 1. Street signs of some streets named after British colonial administrators in Kampala. Photo by Nakisanze Segawa, GPJ Uganda (2020). Source: https://globalpressjournal.com/africa/uganda/drive-rename-roads-reclaim-ugandas-history/

As you walk or drive through Kampala, the Capital City of Uganda, you will encounter roads named after British colonialists like Lord Fr
Frederick Lugard, Sir Henry Colville, Captain William, Colonel Trevor Ternan, Sir Henry Hamilton Johnstone, Sir Gerald Herbert Portal, Queen Alexandrina Victoria, King Edward VII, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth Mary Windsor II and Sir William Mackinnon among others. These street names are not just directions to help one reach their destination or navigate Kampala's traffic jams. They are a painful reminder for many Ugandans about the past harm, inhumane, cruel and degrading treatment inflicted by the British colonial administrators and military officials on the local population violating their rights to dignity and freedom. However, in a February ruling this year (2025), Uganda’s High Court ordered that public roads and other spaces in the capital city named after colonial administrators be renamed. This was thanks to a successful petition by John Ssempebwa, a historian and human rights activist, against Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). This move is not simply a question of changing these names but a powerful act of resistance against the historical injustices of colonialism as well as a statement on who has the right to tell the story of Uganda.

Over the past decades particular locations in Kampala, including streets, roads, and significant places have honoured British colonial rulers, beneficiaries, administrators, military officials, or officials of the former Imperial British East African Company (IBEAC). In contrast, names of some prominent local persons who played a pivotal role in Uganda's transformation before and after independence like Ignatius Kangave Musaazi are sidelined. Renaming streets is not about erasing history but rather correcting it. Several cities like Johannesburg in South Africa and Mumbai in India have in the past reclaimed their public spaces and now Kampala is following in their footsteps.

The debate over colonial legacies in urban spaces in Uganda is not over yet. Many have argued that this move risks opening a pandora box because many public spaces or places in other parts of Uganda are named after British colonial figures including Queen Elizabeth National Park, Murchison Falls National Park, and Lake Victoria. Meanwhile, social activists and campaigners including historians, artists, and students keep pushing for change with others recommending both colonial and local names for purposes of education and tourism. But should the Kampala Capital City Authority keep such colonial names for tourism after all, given the sector is the leading foreign exchange earner for Uganda? Maintaining colonial officials' names on public roads in the Capital city serves to reinforce the historical injustices inflicted upon Ugandans during British colonial rule and marginalises the histories of Ugandans who supported the country during both colonial rule and as an independent nation.

The move to reclaim streets and public spaces named after colonial officials in Kampala is not an isolated case. From the movement in South Africa in 2015 to the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., cities around the world are grappling with colonial legacies. However, one thing is clear: for many Ugandans, streets named after colonial figures have for decades been battlegrounds where memory, identity, and justice are challenged every day as they walk or drive on them.

Reference
Ssempebwa v Kampala Capital City Authority (2025) UGHCCD 43 (Miscellaneous Cause 145 of 2024, 26 February 2025). Available at: eng@2025-02-26" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://ulii.org/akn/ug/judgment/ughccd/2025/43/eng@2025-02-26 (Accessed: 17 April 2025).

05/06/2024

Calling all American friends, fellow Department of American Studies: University of East Anglia - UEA alumn, and anyone with an interest in the US...
America: A History returns on 2nd July with brand new episodes AND we have launched on Patreon.
Support the show from just $3 a month and you get exclusive access to community forums where you can submit guest questions and episode ideas, audience invites to recordings, and bonus content.
Check out our Patreon page right here, and follow America: A History wherever you get your pods. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=119549194&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3RRwTdO3RMSu-ngm8q7Ys4nLvCuensDdTeo4wkY4VjpsAyW0OTS1yTnx0_aem_AdyZseEaGfL05_OkYOEwzwh8_J3jSnEKWo1YgrBmHUEZs2wvhOPQLeJ4SgjHODouz8ZTtI-XIG6Zi04lO01bezHf

Check out the blog post of Emily Hadaway, one of our MA students on the American Studies module, "Race and Resistance" T...
05/06/2024

Check out the blog post of Emily Hadaway, one of our MA students on the American Studies module, "Race and Resistance" The rubric asked that students write a blog post concerning a text or an issue relevant to their final essays. Emily wrote about the way Indigenous culture in the US was imagined through the "before" and "after" photographs of Native Children who boarded at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School.

Please be aware that this blog contains discussions including racism, sexism, abuse and violence in various forms and may provoke a range of feelings and affects for you.

Figure. 1 is a ‘before’ photo of Tom Torlino, a member of the Navajo tribe, upon his arrival at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1882. The second (Fig. 2) is an ‘after’ photo, depicting Torlino’s almost incomprehensible transformation after three years at Carlisle. This transformation, however, is just one example among many illustrating how Euro-American society sought to reconstruct Native Indian people into an image deemed more suitable, or ‘civilised’.

Founder of Carlisle, Captain Richard Henry Pratt believed that “Native American children immersed in mainstream Euro-American culture would become assimilated” , so photographs proving this theory were “sent to officials in Washington, to potential charitable donors and to other reservations to recruit new students.” The photographs while demonstrating ‘assimilation’, also commonly depict late 19th and early 20th century rhetoric of Native Indians as nostalgic: cultures to be observed through curiosity of the past. Scholar, Jeffrey Steele points out that manufacturers used the image of the “American Indian to symbolize their products” , mostly from 1870-1910 when an era of “warfare and legislation” effectively contained American Indian cultures. (Swift 1996, 58). He goes on to suggest that Wild West shows “showing the defeat of Indian warriors, enacted a similar containment” , whereby the only authentic depiction of Native Indians was “fixed” in the past. (Swift 1996, 59).

The idea of ‘containment’ is evident in the two photos of Torlino. The very nature of a ‘before and after’ places his ‘before’ image, permanently in the past, ascribing Native Indian culture to history. There is also perhaps an implication that the Native Indian must be actively contained to ‘assimilate’. Torlino’s “before” image is seemingly more captivating than his “after”, because there is simply more to engage with visually. In the “after” Torlino’s body looks smaller. We see a reduction or containment of cultural expression. His hair once long has been cut and shaped. His clothing is now buttoned right up to his neck and he lacks any meticulously crafted jewellery. His skin tone is lighter and body takes up less room, indicating his journey towards (White) civilisation.,. The “before” photo seems to welcome the imperial gaze where individuals can safely observe at this student with his traditional clothing and appearance on a blank background taken by Euro-American staff..

References

Bird, S.E. (1996) ‘Reduced to Images: American Indians in Nineteenth-Century Advertising’, in J. Steele. (1st ed.) Dressing In Feathers: The Construction Of The Indian In American Popular Culture. Routledge. https://doi-org.uea.idm.oclc.org/10.4324/9780429500909

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center (2023) Analyzing Before and After Photographs & Exporing Student Files. Available at: https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/teach/analyzing-and-after-photographs-exploring-student-files (Accessed: 01/05/2024)

Check out the blog post of Alice Bethell, one of our MA students on the American Studies module, "Race and Resistance" T...
05/06/2024

Check out the blog post of Alice Bethell, one of our MA students on the American Studies module, "Race and Resistance" The rubric asked that students write a blog post concerning a text or an issue relevant to their final essays. Alice wrote about the case of Margaret Garner (1856) and the traumas of racial slavery in the United States.

Please be aware that this blog contains discussions including racism, sexism, abuse and violence in various forms and may provoke a range of feelings and affects for you.

Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s "The Modern Medea" (1867) was painted two years after the end of the American Civil War and depicts the real life story of Margaret Garner. Garner was an enslaved woman in Kentucky who escaped slavery in January 1856 with her husband and their four children running to hopeful freedom in Cincinnati. When white law enforcement authorities found the family however and sought to remove them back to Kentucky, Garner killed her 2-year old daughter, Mary, rather than have her subjected to the brutal dehumanisation of slavery.

Margaret’s decision understandably stirred great controversy at the time, with both sides of the abolition debate seeking to use her story for their ends. The key point of controversy lay in how her infamous deed was tied to her motherhood. Despite the fact that much of white society viewed enslaved women such as Garner as being unfit to be proper mothers and often excluded them from the category of womanhood, many still viewed Garner’s actions as unnatural. Those who spoke in favour of abolition however, made the effort to understand that Garner’s deed came from her maternal instincts, as she made the decision to remove her child from the hands of white slave owners, believing that a lifetime of slavery was crueller.

Noble attempts to portray that in his painting above. The painting is named after the Greek mythological figure Medea who murdered her own children in a revenge plot against her husband Jason, who had abandoned her for another woman. The painting’s title draws a parallel between their actions but Garner’s deed was not out of revenge but more desperation. The painting illustrates the two reactions to Garner’s decision. The white slave owners show their shock and horror as they point at the body of Garner’s child with a wildly fearful expression to underscore the gravity of her action. The man in the hat stares at Garner with an accusatory expression. Garner meets his expression with an unmistakable angry expression, as she points at her dead child on the floor. Her expression and her pointing communicate without words “Look at what YOU made me do to my own daughter!” Garner’s motherhood is further underscored by two more of her young children who are clinging to her skirts for protection rather than cowering away from her. To me, this artistic decision implies that Noble, in spite of his Confederate background, was capable of understanding Garner’s thought process, that perhaps a quick death at the hands of someone you love is preferable to enduring the horrors of slavery.

Garner was unmistakably a victim of American violence, the traumas of racial slavery, and the implications of the profound intersections of race and gender in 19th century America. My continuing research will be into discovering how the media portrays stories concerning gender and violence, whether that media be in art, live news stories or articles.

Thomas Satterwhite Noble, “The Modern Medea” (1867) sourced at US History Honors, https://ushonors.weebly.com/blog/art-analysis

Check out the blog post of Dominic Woolley, one of our MA students on the American Studies module, "Race and Resistance"...
05/06/2024

Check out the blog post of Dominic Woolley, one of our MA students on the American Studies module, "Race and Resistance" The rubric asked that students write a blog post concerning a text or an issue relevant to their final essays. Dominic wrote about the "everyday resistance" of indigenous children at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School during the late nineteenth century.

Please be aware that this blog contains discussions including racism, sexism, abuse and violence in various forms and may provoke a range of feelings and affects for you.

In history we are often taught to look for resistance through an ‘active’ lens focusing on rebellions, such as the American Revolution (1776), or through movements, such as Black Civil Rights during the 1950s and 1960s. By focusing on these more ‘active’ forms of resistance however, we can overlook what American political scientist, James C. Scott, calls ‘everyday forms of resistance’. Scott suggests that everyday resistance techniques ‘are relatively safe, often promise vital material gains and they require little or no formal coordination let alone formal organization’. Using this idea we are able to access a ‘new world’ of resistance that would have gone otherwise unnoticed.

Established in the late nineteenth century Indian Boarding Schools, most famously the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, were at the forefront of US efforts to assimilate Native Americans. These efforts at the hands of white federal agents and the US government were often met with resistance by Native Americans housed at schools like Carlisle. This included more active resistance, such as arson or running away, but also everyday resistance, including the artwork of the students. The drawing by Frank Engler (Cheyenne), during his time at Carlisle Indian Boarding School, is a wonderful example of this.

Engler’s picture depicts a meeting between a representative of the US federal government, likely a soldier, and a Chief from Engler’s tribe, the Cheyenne, in full regalia. The first thing to note here is that Engler has chosen to represent the Cheyenne representative in their full regalia rather than the Carlisle school uniform they would have been forced to wear. Importantly, this suggests a resistance to boarding school practices of removing traditional indigenous clothing upon Native children’s arrival and replacing it with a uniform that would make them appear more ‘civilised’.

Additionally, it is also important to note that the Cheyenne would ‘read’ their images from right to left instead of the more common practice of reading images from left to right. This is important as it places the Cheyenne as the primary image placing them in a position of power over the government representative. Engler is therefore resisting the narrative being pushed upon him by the Carlisle School, that the ‘white American’ is more powerful than himself or his tribe. Furthermore, his decision to draw this from right to left instead of left to right could also be seen as resistance against American form. This would be a very subtle form of resistance as a non-native teacher would not be able to read the drawing in this way, but other Cheyenne would be able to relate to Engler’s perspective.

As a result, Frank Engler’s drawing is as a strong example of James C. Scott’s ideas of ‘everyday forms of resistance’ with the drawing requiring no formal coordination or organisation as well as being a way of sustaining his identity in a safe way.

Bibliography
Scott, J. C. ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’. Copenhagen Papers in East and Southeast Asian Studies 4 (1989): 33-62.

A drawing by Frank Engler of the Cheyenne nation during his time at Carlisle Indian Boarding School (Image from Cumberland County Historical Society. Available at https://carlisleindian.historicalsociety.com/resources/art/)

17/01/2024

Anna Sewell is Norfolk’s most successful novelist, and her incredible creation ‘Black Beauty’ has sold over 50 million copies worldwide and has never been…

22/11/2023

Today's episode is one part interview, one part story time! 🎄📕

Professor Thomas Ruys Smith returns to Christmas Past to discuss his new book, "The Last Gift: The Christmas Stories of Mary E Wilkins Freeman."

At the end, I read one of the stories from the collection — one rescued from obscurity by professor Smith himself in the writing of this book!

Hope you enjoy. Stay festive, sugarplums! Much more in store as the 2023 season of Christmas Past ramps up. 🎅🏻 — view on Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CzbzQj2pohN/

Did you know that we’ve launched a new podcast in collaboration with super-host and producer Liam Heffernan? Liam is als...
06/10/2023

Did you know that we’ve launched a new podcast in collaboration with super-host and producer Liam Heffernan? Liam is also an American Studies UEA alum, which makes things all the more exciting! We’ve already published episodes on a range of key issues in 🇺🇸American life and history, from the Constitution to the Super Bowl and lots in between! We’ve also featured a number of very special guests, like legendary broadcasters Jon Sopel and Robert Mays - and, next week, Gary Younge! Just search for America: A History Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And remember to rate and subscribe!

https://www.podpage.com/america-a-history-podcast/

10/08/2022

Christmas comes but once a year, but it maintains an extraordinary presence in the cultural, social, economic, religious and political landscape. In recent times, holiday spending by American consumers has approached $900 billion; in 2021, Hallmark premiered over 40 new Christmas movies. Each Octobe...

Here is the 4th member of the American Studies faculty we would like you to meet.. 🇺🇸
01/08/2022

Here is the 4th member of the American Studies faculty we would like you to meet.. 🇺🇸

Swipe through this thread to get to know our next member of the American Studies team 🇺🇸
30/07/2022

Swipe through this thread to get to know our next member of the American Studies team 🇺🇸

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