Report // Erin Forbes (University of Bristol) & Bridget Bennett (University of Leeds), "African American Letters," 30 April 2024

Link to the original event here. Thinking through the intertwined histories of racialisation and criminalisation, Erin Forbes (University of Bristol) turned her attention to the genre of eighteenth-century gallows literature, focusing specifically on the origins of the concept of criminal genius, which, she demonstrated, took root in the lived experiences of disenfranchised people. Using a methodology that she terms “corpus convicti,” designed to decouple humanity—particularly the humanity o...