Victoria Ellen Smith

My research explores the construction of cultural identity, sites of memory and oral history in order to challenge disciplinary boundaries and enable new studies of cultural landscapes. With particular focus on 19th century Anglo-Fante society and 20th century Ghanaian broadcasting culture, my work explores Anglophone African literature, West African state building, and the British Empire.

EDUCATION:
Ph.D., University of Warwick
M.A., Loughborough University
B.A., Loughborough University

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
20th century Ghanaian literature and literary networks, cultural history, oral history and oral traditions, history of Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Okyeame: Ghana’s Literary Magazine, B.B.C. Overseas Service to West Africa, oral literature and sites of memory, West African state building, 19th century Anglo-Fante society, British Empire, Fante Asafo military companies, West African domestic slavery, European fortified trading warehouses in West Africa

COURSES TAUGHT CURRENTLY:
HIST 481: Special Paper on the History of the Fante States (1)
HIST 482: Special Paper on the History of the Fante States (2)
HIST 605: Methodology of Oral History
HIST 606: Practice of Oral History

CURRENT RESEARCH:
My current research activity explores the early years of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation as the Gold Coast Broadcasting Service and Ghana Broadcasting System, with particular focus on the platform that it provided for broadcasters and other contributors to disseminate their literary works. Featured writers include Amu Djoleto, Albert Kayper-Mensah, Efua Sutherland, Frank Parkes, Andrew Amankwa Opoku and Cameron Duodu. This work contributes to an international research collective formed under the AHRC project ‘Decolonizing Voices: World Literature and Broadcast Culture at the End of Empire’. It has been developed through ‘Radio, a Platform for Creative Writing: Ghanaian Literature and Broadcast Culture’, funded by the University of Ghana’s Office of Research, Innovation and Development (ORID); and has contributed to the AHRC-funded WUN project, ‘Small Magazines, Literary Networks and Self-Fashioning in Africa and its Diaspora’.

My forthcoming research project with Prof. Andrew Apter (UCLA), Prof. Emmanuel Akyeampong (Harvard) and Dr. Fritz Biveridge (Ghana) draws on my doctoral thesis in Comparative Cultural Studies, which employs literature as a site of memory to interrogate domestic slavery in 19th century Anglo-Fante society and explore written forms for documenting this largely oral history. Areas of study that stem from this work include Euro-African ancestral veneration and the collective forgetting of domestic slavery. For this USA-Ghana collaboration I shall further my research on European forts on the Ghanaian coast, Asafo military companies and Fante gods.  Other work on Cape Coast Castle and its environs explores Euro-African households, the early life of Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, the English poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and representations of the Fante in Ghanaian literary works.
 

SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
The Selected Diaries and Writings of Henry Swanzy: Ichabod 1948-68. Edited with Chris Campbell and Michael Niblett (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, forthcoming)

Radio, a Platform for Creative Writing: Ghanaian Literature and Broadcast Culture - Obsidian 44.2 (2019). Edited with Helen Yitah and Audrey Gadzekpo.

Voices of Ghana: Literary contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System, 1955-57. 2nd edition (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2018)

Shadows of Empire in West Africa: New Perspectives on European Fortifications. Edited with John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)