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Department of History

Ms Shantelle George

BA History (SOAS), MA History (University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica)

Overview

Shantelle George
Name:
Ms Shantelle George
Email address:
Thesis title:
African Indentured Labourers and their Descendants in Grenada and St. Lucia: Belief, Identity and Memory, c.1836-2011
Year of Study:
2011
Website:
http://soas.academia.edu/ShantelleGeorge
Internal Supervisors

Biography

History of Africa and its Diaspora

PhD Research

My PhD employs archival, as well as anthropological methods, in order to highlight the experiences and cultural legacies of the West and Central African indentured immigrants who were forcibly sent to Grenada and St. Lucia in the mid-nineteenth century.

My thesis hopes to demonstrate that although African indentured immigration into Grenada and St. Lucia was much smaller than in the other territories in the Caribbean, its effects on the socio-cultural landscape is none-the-less significant. For example, the interviews I have carried out so far show that, in twenty-first century Grenada, there exists communities and individuals who proudly claim descent from indentured Africans; can recall and practise some of the rituals of Òrìşà worship (a belief brought by the indentured Yorùbá) or the Spiritual Baptist Faith (influenced by Òrìşà worship); retain Yorùbá words and songs; and maintain an “African” identity, which expresses a longing to “return” to Africa.

PhD Conferences

  • Remembering Grenada’s Indentured Africans,' Remembering Slavery, Forgetting Indenture? Conference held at Bangor University, Wales, September 2011 http://rememberingslaveryforgettingindenture.wordpress.com
  • "It’s Not Shango, We Doing African Work": Women and Sàngó worship in Grenada, Creole Day, Conference held at SOAS, University of London, October 2011
  • 'The Legacies of the Yorùbá in Grenada,' Conference of Black Nationalities, Osun State, Nigeria, August 2010, http://blacknationalities.org

PhD Affiliations

  • Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD)
  • Society for Caribbean Studies (SCS)
  • Institute of Historical Research (IHR)