This English Subject Centre sponsored panel was part of the international conference, ‘On Whose Terms? Critical Negotiations in Black British Literature and the Arts’ held at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and organised by Deidre Osborne (Goldsmiths). The panel compared how Black British literature is taught in the UK, Belgium and the US. Panellists Les Back (Goldsmiths), Joan Anim-Addo (Goldsmiths), R. Victoria Arana (Howard University, USA) and Bénédicte Ledent (Liege University, Belgium) critiqued the relative lack of provision in the UK, noting the very few higher education courses that concentrate on Black British literature, though the area is often taught as part of modules on postcolonial and global literatures. In contrast, institutional, ideological and pedagogical structures in the US make it far easier to teach Black literatures there. Arana cited the existence of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which acts as a holding for rare or out-of-print works, calling for a similar archive to be established in the UK as a matter of urgency – especially given the problems of longevity and access to works by Black writers in this country. Anim-Addo suggested that the legitimacy of the subject matter would increase with the presence of Black and other ethnic minorities in English departments no matter what they choose to teach. (See previous page.) Ledent revealed that, in her Belgian university, students were keen to undertake courses on Black British writing and saw this as an assumed aspect of British culture. The panel was very well attended and engendered a lively discussion with the audience; clearly we need more opportunities to discuss race, ethnicity and culture when we talk about what and how we teach literature in the UK.
