Prof. Dr. Alan Rice

Guerrilla Memorialisation and the Archive of the Black Atlantic

In my scholarship, I outline how cultural actors such as Lubaina Himid and Lela Harris have engaged in "guerrilla memorialisations" that make innovative interventions that enable radical ways of thinking through histories of slavey and its legacies. The proposed project at BCDSS will use these foundations to interrogate the ways that culturally informed approaches and methodologies, reading against the grain and in a context of "unequal archival power" (Trouillout), can enable perspectives that disrupt linear chronologies and traditional geographical borders and barriers. My study will be interdisciplinary focusing on contemporary artists and trail guides’ interpretations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TST) and the Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies (SAD) such as, factory child labour and Jim Crow segregation that followed in its wake.

The project will use cultural responses to gaps in the archival record to show how these can help to generate new correspondences and knowledge that reveal hitherto hidden and obscured histories. It follows on from Saidiya Hartman’s idea of Critical Fabulation, however, it is critically different as it foregrounds the significant exceptionalism and transformative contribution visual artists and performative walking trails can make as they are not hidebound to the page and the structural limitations of the written word.

Since 2014
Co-Director of Institute for Black Atlantic Studies, University of Central Lancashire, UK

Since 2012
Professor in English and American Studies, University of Central Lancashire, UK

2004–2012
Reader in English and American Studies, University of Central Lancashire, UK

1995–2004
Lecturer in American Studies, University of Central Lancashire, UK

1991–1997
PhD in American Studies, Keele University, UK

1989–1990
MA in American Cultural Studies, Bowling Green State University, USA

1980–1984
MA in English Literature and History, University of Edinburgh, UK

Monographs

• 2019. With Celeste-Marie Bernier, Hannah Durkin, and Lubaina Himid. Inside the Invisible: Slavery and Memory in the Life and Work of Lubaina Himid (1985–2018). Liverpool University Press.
• 2010. Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic. Liverpool University Press.
• 2003. Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic. Continuum.

Edited Collections/Catalogues etc.

• 2025. As editor. With Olga Michael, Ludmila Martanovschi, Katerina Antoniou, and Janny Webster. Writing Borders and Other Barriers in the Era of Climate Change: Communities of Engagement. Bloomsbury.
• 2025. As editor. With Jenny Webster. Fighting Jim Crow in Lancashire: Remembering the Battle of Bamber Bridge 1943–2023. Preston Black History Group. Commemorative Booklet with introduction. 
• 2023. As editor. With Jenny Webster. Facing the Past: Black Lancastrians. Lancaster Judges’ Lodgings Museum. Exhibition Catalogue.
• 2022. As editor. With David Featherstone and Christian Hogsbjerg. Revolutionary Lives of the Red and Black Atlantic since 1917. Manchester University Press.
• 2022. As editor. With Jack Hepworth. England is My Home: Windrush Lives in Lancashire. Preston Black History Group. Edited Collection with introduction. 
• 2020. As editor. With Andrea Sillis. Lubaina Himid Memorial to Zong. Lancaster Maritime Museum. Exhibition Catalogue. 
• 2012. As editor. With J. C. Kardux. Special Issue 'The Slave Trade’s Dissonant Heritage: Memorial Sites, Museum Practices, and Dark Tourism.' Atlantic Studies 9(3): 245–372.
• 2012. As editor. With Fionnghuala Sweeney. Special Issue 'African Americans and Transatlantic Abolition 1845–1865.' Slavery and Abolition 33(2): 181–31.
• 2011. Trade and Empire: Remembering Slavery. Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Exhibition Catalogue.
• 1999. As editor. With Martin Crawford. Liberating Sojourn: Frederick Douglas and Transatlantic Reform. University of Georgia Press.

Miscellaneous Others

• 2023. With Andrea Sillis, Drahoslava Machova, and Kirsty Roberts. The Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1780–1865: An Insight into Key Historical Members Benefitting from Transatlantic Slavery. Manchester Lit&Phil. Research Report. Access
• 2018. "Black Troops Were Welcome in Britain, Jim Crow Wasn't: The Race Riot of One Night in 1943." The Conversation, 22 June 2018. Online Magazine Article. Access
• 2015. "Lost and Found: Echoes of Britain's Black Voices." Times Higher Education, 11 June 2015. Magazine Article. Access