Scripting Empire

Scripting Empire recovers the literary and cultural history of West Indian and West African writing at the BBC in order to rethink the critical mid-century decades of shrinking British sovereignty, late modernism, and mass migration to the metropole. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, a remarkable group of black Atlantic artists and intellectuals became producers, editors, and freelancers at the corporation. Operating at the interface of a range of literary and broadcast genres, this loose network of African Caribbean writers and thinkers prompt a reassessment of the aesthetic, formal, and political fallout of decolonization between the outbreak of World War II and the first airings of post-colonial independence.

Scripting Empire works comparatively across dozens of different programs spanning the General Overseas Service, Home Service, Light Program, and Third Program. Drawing upon a transnational archive of materials, including scripts, correspondence, periodicals, visual records, and sound recordings, it seeks to reposition the cultural contribution of West Indians and West Africans within a more pervasive and porous account of radio transmission, the legacy of which extends well beyond broadcasting.