Book Launch: Dr Soody Gholami, 'Unhomely England in Post-Imperial British Novels', Introduction by Prof Dame Marina Warner
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Central
Chaired by Prof Dame Marina Warner, the book launch introduces Soody Gholami’s Unhomely England in Post-Imperial British Novels. This book investigates the nature of ‘home’ and nation in post-imperial British novels, which deal with the loss of Empire and its uncanny presence ‘at home’. It delves into histories of British colonialism, the ‘end’ of the Empire, decolonisation, post-Second World War nation-building, and devolution; all of which resurface in four selected novels of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: Marina Warner’s Indigo (1992), Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (1997), Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George (2005), and Zadie Smith’s NW (2012). Gholami’s Unhomely England investigates the novels’ engagement with postwar government policies, specifically in the areas of social housing, the British Welfare State and the National Curriculum. Exploring the writers’ different depictions of home interiors, architectural features and British local landscapes, this book argues that post-imperial British novels continue to highlight racial, gendered and class inequalities that undergird domestic perceptions of belonging and national identity in post-imperial Britain.
(https://www.routledge.com/Unhomely-England-in-Post-Imperial-British-Novels/Gholami/p/book/9781032333786)
Contact name: Soody Gholami
Speakers-
Dr Soody Gholami
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Dr Soody Gholami is a research fellow in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication.
My post-doctorate fellowship, titled ‘Decolonising the Curriculum in post-Brexit Britain’, has focused on the ways that democratised and decolonised understandings of English as a discipline can be integrated into the the teaching and curriculum in Higher Education. Throughout the two-year duration of the fellowship, under Dr Anna Hartnell’s mentorship, I introduced a series of research interventions, which were supported by teaching practices, surveys and workshops.
In particular, I organised and ran two skill-based workshops, aiming to explore the question: ‘What does a decolonised curriculum look like?’ Both workshops required the participants to critically engage with the colonial context and global power asymmetries that have shaped knowledge production, curricula and selected ‘high-culture’ literature. The two workshops were organized in collaboration with the Research Analyst, Coralie Consigny, whose principal work focuses on exploring societal risks stemming from Artificial Intelligence (AI), which include privacy concerns, biases, and larger systemic threats. The seminars were funded by the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network.
The first of these task-based workshops was titled ‘Claiming Space in the Digital World: Decolonising the Humanities’ and explored how our connection to ‘space’ (physical or virtual) becomes part of our identity. The seminar began by questioning the ways in which a sense of attachment to a territory/geographical location might be reinforced through country flags, company logos, etc. For instance, British companies such as Tesco or British Airways use the colours of the Union Jack for their business branding. We then explored how this sense of belonging and nationalism would be strengthened or contested in other spaces (digital, political, higher education, etc).
Drawing on Roopika Risam’s New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (2019), the session then examined the construction of digitised archives and digital literary and cultural record, questioning power relations that could represent and privilege certain cultures and histories and exclude others. This included an extended conversation on the non-neutral and non-democratic digital space and on existing prejudices and biases in big data, algorithms, AI and technological practices.
The final task of the workshop engaged participants in thinking about a ‘decolonised Britain’ and a ‘space’ which would be inclusive and accessible to all. We created five categories: ‘Art/Culture’, ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Landscape/Environment’, ‘Universities’ and ‘Living Beings and Interactions’. Coralie and I collected the responses under each category and entered the participants’ textual descriptions into the AI tool Dall.E to visualise a ‘Decolonised Britain’. Once the image was created by Dall.E, participants were asked to critique it and question its biases.
Despite the participants’ democratising ideas such as ‘no fences, no doors’; ‘diversity in museums’; ‘no tuition fees’; ‘collaborative learning’; ‘fish as kin’; or ‘accessibility’; it was interesting to see that the AI software centralised and visually centred one of the participants’ suggested terms ‘Sauron-eye watching’. The watching eye determined the rest of space and was positioned in a way to visually and conceptually ‘look down’ on everything else.
The task, which required participants’ critiquing of the AI created image, showcased how participants in higher education can intervene in recognising discriminatory digital practices and in playing an active role in digital knowledge production.
The second workshop, titled ‘Accessible Humanities: Representation as Enablement’, explored different perceptions of disability (medical, cultural, political and legislative) and examined how unequal power relations shaped cultures of disability and disability studies. In particular, certain historical contexts such as colonialism and eugenics were evoked to investigate how imperialist ideologies combined with nationalistic movements and the industrial revolution established a connection between the nation and ‘abled bodies’ for capitalistic purposes. In the seminar, we looked at different political, cultural and material conditions that would negatively and disproportionately impact people in the global south and suggested that disability studies take into account these cultural and historical differences and avoid universalising impairment and disability.
In the context of higher education, the workshop then explored the integration of disability and disability studies into teaching practices and cultural and physical landscape of academic institutions. Through the set tasks, we firstly explored barriers (social, institutional, physical, legal, cultural and technological) that could diminish a disabled person’s full participation in society, particularly in higher education. The seminar then addressed representation of disability, its unrecognised prevalence in literature and culture, as well as prejudices, biases and stigmas around disability.
To engage the participants in different perspectives on disability, Coralie and I set three tasks throughout the workshop. The first activity asked everyone to think of ‘the image of a normal day’. We asked them: what do you need or use to get through your day? Their responses varied from ‘coffee’, ‘glasses’, ‘medication’, ‘cold baths’ to ‘my mobile phone’. The objective of this task was to determine how all of us understood our own bodies and tried to assess and accommodate our needs.
To adopt more inclusive and positive views of disability, the second task encouraged the participants to think about literary and cultural representation of disability. They were first asked to name a film or a book that featured disability. The responses were Rain Man, King Lear, The Untouchables, etc. The participants were then encouraged to discuss how literary representation could question notions of normalcy and be a form of enablement for people with disabilities.
Following this, we looked at two separate cases to examine disability and representation in relation to national identity and belonging: 1. Oscar Pistorius (known as ‘Blade Runner’) 2. The opening ceremony of 2012 London Paralympics. These two specific cases sparked conversations over disability as identity category and its intersection with race, gender and class. Participants explored narratives of nationality and belonging in relation to disability and other forms of identification.
Both workshops encouraged participants to critically engage in the decolonising agenda debates, questioning biases and prejudices that accompany a sense of nationality and belonging in different cultural, digital or political spaces. While the first seminar explored how the connection between territory and narratives of belonging could be contested or strengthened in the digital space, the second workshop examined the relationship between disability and cultural, physical and academic landscape. Thinking in relation to the decolonising agenda, both workshops’ focus on ‘inclusive space’ generated fruitful conversations on democratising teaching practices and curricula.
Dr Gholami’s book, titled ‘Unhomely England in Post-Imperial British Novels’, is published by Routledge (22 January 2026). She is also writing a chapter entitled ‘Beyond Decolonisation’ for the upcoming book, The Routledge companion to Dangerous Books, due to be published in autumn 2026.
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Prof Marina Warner
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Marina Warner’s mother was Italian and her father an English bookseller; she was brought up in Egypt, Belgium, and Cambridge, England. She has been a writer since she was young, specialising in mythology and fairy-tales, with an emphasis on the part women play in them. Her award-winning books include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (l976), Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (l982), From the Beast to the Blonde : On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (1994) and No Go the Bogeyman (1998). In l994 she gave the BBC Reith Lectures on the theme of Six Myths of Our Time. Her books include Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media (2006), Stranger Magic: Charmed States and The Arabian Nights (2011) and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale (OUP, 2012) . She also writes fiction: The Lost Father (l988), was short-listed for the Booker prize, and in 2000, The Leto Bundle (2000) was long-listed. Her third collection of short stories, Fly Away Home came out in 2014. She has curated exhibitions, including The Inner Eye (l996), Metamorphing (2002-3), and Only Make-Believe: Ways of Playing (2005); Forms of Enchantment: Writing on Art and Artists will be published next year. She chaired the Man Booker International Prize for 2015. Her third collection of short stories, Fly Away Home, was published by Salt in autumn 2015.
Since 2016, she has been working on the theme of Sanctuary and culture in times of dislocation and diaspora, developing the international Stories in Transit project, which aspires to work with displaced individuals, whatever their status, asking: What role can imaginary narratives play in contemporary conditions? In what ways can the ancient human capacity to tell and pass on stories help in the present crisis? Can make-believe help make-truth? More information about the work can be found here: www.storiesintransit.org.
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