The Post-Colonial Literatures Research Group was set up by Dennis Walder in 1992, as the ‘Colonial and Post-Colonial Literatures Research Group’. This was part of an initiative Dennis developed through the 1980s and 1990s toward extending and internationalizing the range of texts and criticism experienced by students within the OU literature curriculum, up to then resolutely Eurocentric. His aim was to create a group that would support further curriculum expansion while attracting new researchers (including postgraduates) in what was fast becoming a recognized field within the discipline, overtaking earlier ‘Commonwealth Literature’ and ‘New Writings’ agendas. Colleagues had been persuaded to include the study of texts in English from former colonized territories Nigeria, India, South Africa and the Caribbean in the Department’s lead third-level course ‘Literature in the Modern World’ (1990-2000), and the enthusiastic response of students ensured wider Faculty support.
A seminar series was begun, attracting leading scholars such as Lyn Innes, Harish Trivedi, and Peter Hulme; a new dissertation course on ‘Post-colonial Literatures’ followed; doctoral candidates appeared; an externally-funded Research Fellow from Canada set up the group’s first international conference, which issued in a co-edited book on South African Theatre As/And Intervention (Blumberg and Walder, 1999). External recognition had been established, for example in Bart Moore-Gilbert’s Postcolonial Theory (1997), as well as through links with Singapore, where Dennis set up a locally-oriented version of the dissertation course with Ban Kah-Choon and Rajeev Patke. As the group gathered momentum, the Faculty funded the appointment of two full-time research staff, Susheila Nasta, who came to the OU from Queen Mary, University of London and then Robert Fraser, previous based at the University of Cambridge. Their arrival significantly broadened the group’s scope and further developed its activities, leading to a collaborative London-based seminar series, already established by Nasta at the Institute of English Studies. Notably several successful bids for substantial externally-funded projects followed, further enhancing the group’s national and international profile. Wasafiri, the magazine of contemporary international writing, founded in 1984, is also now housed at the OU.