The presentation of my “Finding Zora Neale Hurston in the British Empire” paper at the 2024 Britain and the World conference at the University of Winchester seems to have gone well yesterday.

I loved the comments and questions I heard afterwards. It was an honor to present with co-panelist University of Glasgow’s Dr. Rachel Chin. Her paper was titled “Empire, Citizenship and Belonging: The Chinese in Jamaica.” There was lots of resonance between our work.

In yesterday’s paper, I extended the possibilities of my Hurston monograph that Johns Hopkins University Press published last year.

It has been another long haul here in the UK. I had a chance to visit several archives including the Bodleian in Oxford and the Churchill Archive at Churchill College in Cambridge.

The audio for my talk can be found in this Youtube clip.

University of Florida Department of History Doctoral Candidate Jeffrey Jones took the above photograph. I look forward to seeing him on a future research trip to UF’s Smathers Libraries.