Contact Information
Biography
Areas of Specialization
African, Black Atlantic and African Diaspora Studies; Postcolonial Studies; South African Literature; late 19th and 20th Century British Literature of empire; black British literature
Activities and Interests
I’m of African-American, Ashkenazy Jewish and US Anglo origins, am from a Marxist, feminist and black nationalist political background; grew up in the Highlands of Scotland; all of this has influenced my research interests. I analyze the cultures of imperialism and of anti-colonialist resistance, and have a particular interest in South Africa. I am also interested in black Atlantic and black diaspora studies. My current interdisciplinary book project is provisionally titled Nationalism, Modernity and Transnationalism in African Intellectuals. The book focuses on black South African nationalists, and their links with African-American intellectuals of the early 20th century. I am writing two public-facing books as well: one is a history of The Black Scholar Journal, co-founded by my late father Robert Chrisman in 1969; the second is a study of the life and art of West Coast expressionist artist and political radical, Byron Randall (my late maternal grandfather).
Research
Selected Research
- Laura Chrisman. Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism. Manchester University Press. 2003.
- Laura Chrisman. Editor. “The Rendez-Vous of Conquest”: Rethinking Race and Nation. Lawrence and Wishart. 2001.
- Laura Chrisman. Rereading the Imperial Romance: British Imperialism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner and Plaatje. Oxford University Press. 2000.
- Laura Chrisman. Ed. With Farah Jasmine Griffin and Tukufu Zuberi. Transcending Traditions: Afro-American, African Diaspora and African Studies. The Black Scholar. Journal of Black Studies and Research. 30, 3-4, 2000.
- Laura Chrisman. Ed. with Patrick Williams. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Harvester Wheatsheaf Press. 1993 / Columbia University Press. 1994.
- Laura Chrisman. Ed. with John Barrell. Colonial and Post-colonial History. Special issue of History Workshop Journal. 36, 1993.
Research Advised
- Chaturvedi, Avu. South by Southwest: Westerns and Postcolonial Resistance. 2025. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Lilly May Doughty: The Toxicity of Victorian Masculine Ideals: An Analysis of Jane Eyre’s Male Characters
- Adam Ramer: A Decent Education: A Reflection on Homeschooling, the Conservative Christian Right, and Tara Westover’s ‘Educated’
- Hankinson, Stephanie K. The Aesthetics of Catastrophe Time: Constructing Transhistorical and Artistic Archives of Disaster in Haiti and the Gulf Coast. 2023. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Jaccard, Erik. Speculative Fiction, Catastrophe, and the Devolutionary Imagination in Postwar Britain. 2017. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Wimberly, Meri. Zimbabwean Literature since 1980: Irrealist Style and Capitalist Modernization. 2017. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Sohn, Ilsu. Ageing and Imperial Mobility in the British Novel, 1845-1945. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Mukherjee, Sharmila. Shakespeare and the Colonial Encounter in India in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. 2016. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Chetty, Raj. Race Fundamentalism: Caribbean Theater and the Challenge to Black Diaspora. 2013. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Prasansak, Ram. Giving Ghana at the Edge of the Salt Water. 2011. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.
- Burns, Gust Henry. Antiblackness and fundamental accumulation: an aesthetic ontology of prohibition and persistence through black arts. 2023. University of Washington, PhD dissertation.