The University of Sheffield
Institute for Lifelong Learning (TILL)

Sandra Courtman, BA, MA, CertEd, PhD

Programme Director: Creative Writing

Email: s.courtman@sheffield.ac.uk
Tel: 0114 222 7116

Room C1, 1st Floor, 8 Palmerston Road

Research

I research Caribbean and Black British writing and culture of the post second world war period. I combine an interest in creative writing with research into occluded migrant women writers from the West Indies. I have published work on the apparent paucity and marginality of West Indian women's writing in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s and its absence from literary historical accounts of the period. My method is interdisciplinary and I have worked with literary and non-literary sources, including photography, oral histories and have conducted interviews with authors, migrants, publishers, book-promoters and scholars. I have published a book chapter which contextualises an original bibliography of West Indian women's writing from 1948 to 1979. I recovered, edited and introduced Joyce Gladwell’s rare autobiography for reprint as a Macmillan Caribbean Classic (2003). I maintain a strong interest in the sociology and politics of publishing. This arises from research into the position of West Indian women writers within writers' and artists’ organisations. I have a special interest in the short story and have published work on the historical and cultural significance of the Caribbean short story.

Activities and Distinctions

Guest editor of special Issue of ENTERTEXT: an interdisciplinary humanities e-journal on Caribbean Literature and Culture: ‘Opening Out the Way(s) to the Future’ (forthcoming 2012). 

http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/gate/entertext/home.htm

2007- present, organiser of Caribbean Research Seminar in the North Series funded by the British Academy. Three research seminars per year hosted by UK universities, art galleries and linked institutions.

2000- 2011, organising committee of The Society for Caribbean and editor of its Online Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference papers, ISSN 1471-2024, http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk

2005-2007, Co-opted member of a consultative committee formed by the Museums Libraries and Archives Council in The West Midlands to consider the commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

1999-2002, Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies (SCS).

2000-2001, Working party membership of 'Black Pasts: Birmingham Futures'.

Current Undergraduate and Postgraduate Teaching

I am the programme director for Literature with Creative Writing in The Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Sheffield. I teach on the BA Literature and Creative Media degree track and on the Certificate in Creative writing. I have responsibility for the planning, delivery and quality of the creative writing programme at TILL. I teach the following undergraduate courses:

ACE 1325 Writing Fiction: Short Stories
ACE 1756 Creative Reading: Creative Writing
ACE 1869 The Making of Culture
ACE 1777 Rebellion Freedom and Change: Popular Culture of the 1960s
ACE 1231 Themes and Issues in Modern English Studies
ACE 2349 Short stories of the Caribbean
ACE 2342 Travellers Tales: Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic
ACE 2372 Independent Research Project
ACE 3060 Dissertation

I am occasional contributor to the MA English Literature (Creative Writing Pathway) in the School of English and teaches short fiction on:

EGH 6018 Creative Writing: Theories of Writing

Previous Experience

Previous posts include: Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing, Staffordshire University and subject specialist for English Literature and Director of Lecturer Development and Support in the School of Continuing Studies, University of Birmingham.

I have a wide experience of teaching non-traditional students in HE, FE and Prison education and am particularly committed to widening access to higher education. As a mature student, I completed her first degree part-time and went on to study for a Masters degree in Literary and Cultural Studies and was awarded a PhD from Bristol University in 1999.

Publications

‘Windrush Women and the Fiction of Beryl Gilroy and Andrea Levy,’, in Special Issue on Andrea Levy of ENTERTEXT ed. Wendy Knepper: an interdisciplinary humanities e-journal, issue 9, 2012: 84-105. Peer reviewed article.

http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/gate/entertext/issues.htm

‘Dorothy’s Heart of Darkness: How Europe meets Africa in A Distant Shore’, in Caryl Phillips: Writing in the Key of Life, ed. Bénédicte Ledent (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, Cross/Cultures Series, 2012): 265-283 Chapter

‘Cross Cultural Readings of the Caribbean short Story’, in The Caribbean Short Story: Contexts, Theory, Practice, eds. Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt and Emma Smith (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2011): 251-269 Chapter

‘Carl Plasa, Slaves to Sweetness: British and Caribbean Literatures of Sugar,’ in Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, ed. Gad Heuman (2010): 306-308 Review.

‘”Lost Years”: The Occlusion of West Indian Women Writers in the Early Canon of Black British Writing’, in Diasporic Literature and Theory, Where Now? ed. Mark Shackleton (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009) 57-86. Chapter.

‘Personalia’ in Literature as History: Essays in Honour of Peter Widdowson, eds. Simon Barker and Jo Gill (London: Continuum, 2009) 175-6. Personal reflection.

‘Beryl Gilroy’, ‘Claudia Jones’, ‘The Caribbean Artists Movement’ and ‘The BBC’s Caribbean Voices’ in Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics and History, eds. Richard M. Juang; Noelle Morrissette. (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008)

History reference entries.

‘Culture is Ordinary: The Legacy of the Scottie Road and Liverpool 8 Writers,’ in Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews, eds. Deryn Rees-Jones and Michael Murphy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007) 194-210. Chapter.

‘A Journey through the Imperial Gaze: Birmingham’s Photographic Collections and its Caribbean Nexus,’ in Visual Culture and Decolonisation in Britain eds. Simon Faulkner and Anandi Ramamurthy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) 127-153 Chapter.

‘The Psyche of a ' Cruel, Flagellating lot': The Abusive Streak in White West Indian Women's Writing,’ The Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 6 (2006), ISSN 1471-2024 http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk

‘Not Good Enough or Not Man Enough? Beryl Gilroy as the Anomaly in the Evolving Black British Canon’ in A Black British Canon? ed. by Gail Low and Marion Wynne-Davies (Oxford: Macmillan Palgrave, 2006) 50-74. Chapter.

‘A Journey through the Imperial Gaze: Birmingham’s Photographic Collections and its Caribbean Nexus,’ The Arts Journal, Guyana, 2:2 (March 2006) pp. 87-95 Journal article

‘Blacks in Ivory Towers Can’t Write about Ghettos’ in Write Black British: From Post Colonial to Black British ed. by Kadija George (London: Hansib Publications, 2005) 209-230. Chapter.

Beyond the Blood, the Banana and the Beach: New Perspectives in Caribbean Studies (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, July, 2004). Book

Joyce Gladwell, Brown Face, Big Master edited and with a new introduction (13,000 words) by Sandra Courtman (Oxford: Macmillan Caribbean Classic Series, 2003). Book.

‘A Black British Canon?' Wasafiri, 36 (2002), pp. 51-56. Journal article.

Entries on 'Being Here I and II'; 'From Negative Stereotype to Positive Image'; 'Vanley Burke'; 'The Caribbean Artists Movement'; 'The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers'; 'Beryl Gilroy', in Alison Donnell, ed. Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture (London: Routledge, 2001).

'Portrait of a West Indian Woman as a Young Writer in England,' Wasafiri, 33 (2001):9-15. Journal article.

Entries on 'Joyce Gladwell'; 'Gloria Escoffery'; 'Barbara Ferland' in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean Cultures eds. Mike Gonzalez, Dan Balderston, and Ana Lopez(London: Routledge, 2000), 259, 120, 83.

‘Freirian Liberation, Cultural Transaction and Writing from "The Working Class and the Spades"', The Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 1 (2000), ISSN 1471-2024 http://www.caribbeanstudies.org.uk

'"Unnatural Silences" and the Making of a Bibliography of Anglophone West Indian Women Publishing in Post-War Britain', Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora, 2 (1999): 55-85. Journal article

'What is Missing from the Picture? Reading Desire in Dyche's Studio Photographs of the Windrush Generation', Wasafiri, 29 (1999) 9-15. Journal article

'Review In Praise of Love and Children by Beryl Gilroy', Mango Season, journal for the Caribbean Women Writers Alliance, 6 (1996) 2. Review.

'On Becoming a Published Caribbean Woman Writer in Britain: Beryl Answick Gilroy', Dawtas Write Herstory, a celebration of black woman writers, (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1996) 8-9. Article.

'The Myth of Women's Silence', FEDeration: the Magazine of the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, 6 (1995) 11-12. Article.
'Fed Writer to Literati or how does a Louise Shore get to be a Jean Rhys?' FEDeration, the Magazine of the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, (1996) 7-9. Article.