Ronald Cummings

Professor, English & Cultural Studies

My research has been primarily oriented around three particular sites of inquiry. These might be broadly classified in terms of 1) questions of cultural and literary decolonization, 2) questions of sexual citizenship and 3) the histories of Black freedom struggles. These are interconnected topics in the context of my own work and are part of an ongoing examination of questions of Black freedom and the political work of decolonization.  

 

My most recent book, The Routledge Handbook of Caribbean Studies (coedited with Pat Noxolo and Kevon Rhiney) expands on my previous research which sought to trace transitions in our understandings and practice of Caribbean Studies. Most significantly it builds on, the 2021 volume Caribbean Literatures in Transition 1970-2020 ( co-edited with Alison Donnell) which offered a critical survey of Caribbean literary studies in the latter part of the twentieth century, (a moment of intense activity and change) and was also the first historiographical work to outline developments and directions in Caribbean Literary and cultural studies in the 21st century. I have also published essays on Caribbean literature, cultural decolonization and critical histories of Caribbean thought in journals such as Small Axe and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 

 

The second thematic strand of my research focuses on questions of gender, sexuality and sexual citizenship. My published work in this area includes survey essays and critical entries in the Routledge Companion to Caribbean Literature (2011), the Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016),The Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (2019), Keywords for Caribbean Studies (digital project, 2020) and Caribbean Literatures in Transition 1970-2020 (2021). More recently my work has also explored queer transnational contexts. My essay “On the (Im)possibility of Black British Queer Studies” published in Locating African European Studies: Interventions-Intersections-Conversations, examined the unsettled intersections between queerness, race and nation in the Black British context. I have also co-edited a special double issue of the Journal of Canadian Studies 54:2-3 (with 19 essay contributions) on the theme of “Queer Canada”.

 

The third main strand of my research focuses on Black histories of resistance and protest. The volume Harriet's Legacies: Race, Historical Memory and Futures in Canada, (co-edited with Natalee Caple) is one key contribution that returns to the narrative of Harriet Tubman to examine potential lessons for freedom struggles today. This volume is the first to center Tubman in the context of Canada and won the book prize from the Canadian Studies Network for best edited collection 2023. I have also co-edited The Fire That Time: Transnational Black Radicalism and The Sir George Williams Occupation (with Nalini Mohabir) which reexamines the forgotten history of the 1969 protests by Black and Caribbean students at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal and their two weeklong occupation and protest against racial discrimination. Nalini Mohabir and I have additionally co-edited two journal special issues focused on the Sir George Williams University protests (sx salon 33 and Topia 44). 

 

My critical work across these various projects all aim to contribute to an understanding of decolonization and freedom and are all part of an insistent search for theoretical frameworks to account for the nuances of Black life in our contemporary world and in the historical archives. 

 

I welcome graduate supervisees interested in Caribbean Studies, queer studies, literary archives and historiography, Black political thought and social movements.