CSLBS Elsa V. Goveia Speaker Series 2024: Caribbean Journeys and Colonial Legacies by Merle Collins
The UCL Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery held the third instalment in its Speaker Series honouring one of UCL History’s most distinguished graduates, the Guyanese historian Elsa V. Goveia, at UCL on Monday 14 October 2024.
In collaboration with the UCL Institute of the Americas and Peepal Tree Press, the special guest speaker was distinguished writer Merle Collins, who read from Ocean Stirrings, a novel written in tribute to Louise Little, Grenadian mother of Malcolm X and his siblings.
Merle Collins was born in Aruba to Grenadian parents who returned to Grenada soon after her birth. During the Grenada Revolution, she served as a coordinator for research on Latin America and the Caribbean for the Government of Grenada. She left Grenada in 1983. She is the author of three novels: Ocean Stirrings (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and Bocas Award for Caribbean Fiction), Angel and The Colour of Forgetting, a collection of short stories: The Ladies Are Upstairs, and three critically acclaimed collections of poetry. She has recently retired from teaching Caribbean Literature at the University of Maryland.
Elsa V. Goveia (1925-1980) read History (Honours) at UCL from 1945-1948. She was one of the first West Indian students to have studied in the department. While a student at UCL she won the prestigious Pollard Prize for English History in 1947. She completed her PhD from University of London in 1952 and became a distinguished historian and teacher of British slavery. For three decades she taught History at the University of the West Indies, Mona, in Jamaica, where she was responsible for a pioneering course on Caribbean History. Among her publications are A Study of the Historiography of the British West Indies and Slave Society of the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century. This speaker series in Goveia's alma mater department honours her foundational work in the study of Atlantic slavery.
