Dr Richard Smith

Staff details

Position Senior Lecturer
Email r.w.smith (@gold.ac.uk)
Phone +44 (0)20 7919 7243
Dr Richard Smith

Teaching

  • MC52014B Media, Modernity and Social Thought
  • MC52063A Media, Memory and Conflict
  • MC53001B Personal Tutored Research (coordinator)

Research Interests

Richard has written widely on the experience of West Indian troops in both World Wars and the race and gender implications of military service in the British Empire, including Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (2004, 2009). Richard’s current research focuses on representations of black and Asian troops in popular history documentary and the role these images serve within the national memory of multicultural Britain. He also continues to research the black presence in Britain 1900-1945; the role of the mass media in the British Empire, and comparative history approaches to colonial soldiery in modern empires. Richard’s expertise is regularly sought by broadcasters, museums and archives and he is involved in a number of academic and local history initiatives marking the centenary of the First World War. Richard was on the advisory committee for the 'Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire' project funded by the AHRC, he is a contributing author to GWonline, the Bibliography, Filmography and Webography on Gender and War since 1600 and the Oxford African American Studies Center and has recently joined the editorial board of the Journal of War & Culture Studies.

Publications and research outputs

Book

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2004. Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719069858

Book Section

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2021. ‘The YMCA and West Indian Pan-African encounters during the First World War: The Drury Lane club for “Coloured Sailors and Soldiers”’. In: Santanu Das; Anna Maguire and Daniel Steinbach, eds. Colonial Encounters in a Time of Global Conflict, 1914-1918. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 190-213. ISBN 9781138082106

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2020. Colonial Soldiers: Race, Military Service and Masculinity during and beyond World War I and II. In: Karen Hagemann; Stefan Dudink and Sonya Rose, eds. Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199948710

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2017. Loss and longing: emotional responses to West Indian soldiers during the First World War. In: Ashley Jackson, ed. The British Empire and The First World War. London: Routledge, pp. 419-428. ISBN 9781138294905

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2017. The Impact of the First World War on Pan-Africanism: The Transcendence of National and Imperial Boundaries. In: Debra Rae Cohen and Douglas Higbee, eds. Teaching Representations of the First World War. New York: Modern Language Association, pp. 85-92. ISBN 9781603293044

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2017. 'British West Indian Memories of World War One: From Militarized Citizenship to Conscientious Objection'. In: Shalini Puri and Lara Putnam, eds. Caribbean Military Encounters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 39-48. ISBN 978-1-137-58014-6

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2016. Entries for Gordon, William James; Johns, Vere; Reid, Hubert. In: Franklin W Knight and Henry Louis Gates Jr, eds. Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. OUP. ISBN 978-0199935796

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2016. Post-War Redemption in the Jamaican Literary Imagination. In: David Owen and Cristina Pividori, eds. Writings of Persuasion and Dissonance in the Great War: That Better Whiles May Follow Worse. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, pp. 173-188. ISBN 9789004314917

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. Post-colonial Melancholia and the Representation of West Indian Volunteers in the British Great War Televisual Memory. In: Martin Löschnigg and Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz, eds. The Great War in Post-Memory Literature and Film. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, pp. 385-395. ISBN 9783110362909

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. The First World War and the Permanent West Indian Soldier. In: Richard Fogarty and Andrew Jarboe, eds. Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict. London: I.B.Tauris, pp. 303-327. ISBN 978-1780764405

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. Propaganda, Imperial Subjecthood and National Identity in Jamaica during the First World War. In: Troy Paddock, ed. World War I and Propaganda. Leiden: Brill, pp. 89-112. ISBN 978-9004264564

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. Foreword to Juliet Gilkes Romero, At the Gates of Gaza. In: Juliet Gilkes Romero, ed. At the Gates of Gaza. London: Oberon. ISBN 978-1783191734

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2013. 'The black male body in the white imagination during WW1'. In: Paul Cornish and Nicholas Saunders, eds. Bodies in Conflict: Corporeality, Materiality, and Transformation. London: Routledge, pp. 39-52. ISBN 978-0415834223

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2012. Soldiery. In: Philippa Levine and John Marriott, eds. The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Imperial Histories. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 359-376. ISBN 978-0754664154

Smith, Richard W. P. and Haggith, Toby. 2011. "Sons of Our Empire": shifting ideas of 'race' and the cinematic representation of imperial troops in the World War I. In: Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe, eds. Empire and Film. London: British Film Institute, pp. 35-53. ISBN 978-1-844-57421-6

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2011. "Heaven grant you strength to fight the battle for your race": Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and the First World War in the Jamaican memory. In: Santanu Das, ed. Race, Empire and First World War Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 265-282. ISBN 978-0-521-50984-8

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2011. The Impact of the First World War on the Garvey Movement. In: Robert A Hill, ed. Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. XI Durham, NC: Duke University Press, cclxxv-cclxxxi. ISBN 978-0-822-34690-6

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2009. J. Edmestone Barnes, a Jamaican Apocalyptic Visionary in the Early Twentieth Century. In: Karolyn Kinane and Mike Ryan, eds. End of days: essays on the apocalypse from antiquity to modernity. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, pp. 120-141. ISBN 978-0-786-44204-1

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2008. "The Black Peril": race and masculinity on the Home Front in the First World War. In: Louise Ryan and Wendy Webster, eds. Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 19-34. ISBN 075467178X

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2007. 'World War One', 'World War Two', 'Booker T Washington'. In: David Dabydeen and John Gilmore, eds. The Oxford Companion to Black British History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192804396

Article

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2020. Review of Harry Franqui-Rivera, Soldiers of the Nation: Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, 1868–1952. New West Indian Guide, 94(1/2), pp. 161-162. ISSN 1382-2373

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2019. Dalea Bean, Jamaican Women and the World Wars: On the Front Lines of Change. New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 93(1-2), pp. 189-190. ISSN 1382-2373

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2016. Multicultural Commemoration and West Indian Military Service in the First World War. Environment, Space and Place, 8(2), pp. 7-28. ISSN 2066-5377

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano, The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its People [Book review]. Cultural and Social History, 12(3), pp. 442-443. ISSN 1478-0038

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. The Multicultural First World War: memories of the West Indian contribution in contemporary Britain. Journal of European Studies, 45(4), pp. 347-363. ISSN 0047-2441

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. John Belcham, Before the Windrush: Race Relations in Twentieth-Century Liverpool (2014). American Historical Review, 120(2), pp. 721-722. ISSN 0002-8762

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. ‘Loss and longing: emotional responses to West Indian soldiers during the First World War’. The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 103(2), pp. 243-252. ISSN 0035-8533

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. Cultivating Victory: The Women's Land Army & The Victory Garden Movement, Cecilia Gowdy-Wygant. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh (2013), (240 pp.). Women’s Studies International Forum, 44, pp. 197-198. ISSN 0277-5395

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2013. Racism in the Trenches. The World Today magazine, 48,

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2013. Brian L. Moore and Michele A. Johnson, "They Do as They Please": The Jamaican Struggle for Cultural Freedom after Morant Bay. The American Historical Review, 118, pp. 901-902.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2008. West Indians at War. Caribbean Studies, 36(1), pp. 223-231.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2004. Caribbean Studies. Caribbean Studies, 32(2), pp. 260-265. ISSN 0008-6533

Conference or Workshop Item

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2021. 'The Manchester Guardian, Pan Africanism and Anti-colonial Struggle: the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, 1935-1937'. In: Liberalism Inc: 200 years of the Guardian. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 23 - 24 April 2021.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2020. 'Remembering Jamaica's role in the First World War: from empire to multicultural remembrance'. In: Friends of the Georgian Society of Jamaica monthly talk. Online Event, United Kingdom 24 November 2020.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2020. 'Remembering the role of the West Indies in the First World War: from empire to multicultural remembrance'. In: Black History Month lunchtime talks. Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, United Kingdom 12-26 October 2020.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2020. 'Imagining the West Indian Soldier: From Empire to Multicultural Commemoration'. In: Seminar Series organised by In Flanders Fields Museum and School of History/Gateways to the First World War, University of Kent. In Flanders Fields Museum, Ieper, Belgium 13 February 2020.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2019. '‘From empire to multicultural nation: memory and forgetting during the First World War centenary commemorations’'. In: Legacies of the First World War Diversity Festival. Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, United Kingdom 23 March 2019.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2018. 'Remembering the West Indian contribution in the First World War'. In: Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Fellowship. Burfort Court, Guy's Hospital, London, United Kingdom 11 September 2018.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2018. 'Military-related crime in Jamaica during the 1920s and 1930s: questions of race, masculinity and nationhood'. In: British Crime Historians symposium. Edge Hill University, United Kingdom 1 September 2018.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2018. 'Race, memory and posthumous justice during the First World War centenary commemorations'. In: Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities: Memory and Transformation. Birmingham Conference and Exhibition Centre, United Kingdom 21 November 2018.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2018. 'The British West Indies Regiment mutiny at Taranto and multicultural memories of the First World War'. In: Voices of the Homes Fronts. The National Archives, United Kingdom 19 October 2018.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2017. '“That our national and allied hopes be speedily realized”: West Indian war experiences and aspirations during 1917'. In: The First World War and the Americas: from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom 1 July 2017.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2016. 'Memories of British West Indian service in the First World War in multicultural Britain'. In: Minding Black Histories in War Times Community Development Day. School of Media, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom 30 September 2016.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2016. 'Locating the memory of British West Indian First World War military service'. In: The First World War: Commemoration and Memory. Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, United Kingdom 26-27 February 2016.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. 'Pan-African perspectives among West Indian troops during and after the First World War'. In: Cultural Encounters during Global War, 1914-1918: Traces, Spaces, Legacies. King's College London, United Kingdom 21-22 January 2016.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. 'Remembering the West Indian contribution to the First World War'. In: Saturday public talk. New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, United Kingdom 24 October 2015.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. 'Mediated memories and the West Indian dead of the First World War'. In: Foreign Fields: The Recovery and Commemoration of War Dead in Post-Colonial Contexts. Kingston University, United Kingdom 17 September 2015.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. 'The British West Indies and the First World War'. In: Heritage London Fund knowledge briefing. Heritage Lottery Fund, 7 Holbein Place, London SW1, United Kingdom 23 April 2015.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. 'West Indian military service and multicultural memories of the First World War'. In: Aftermath: The Cultural Legacies of WW1. King’s College London, United Kingdom 21-23 May 2015.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. 'Shifting Commemoration and Memory: West Indians in the Great War'. In: Colston Research Symposium. University of Bristol, United Kingdom 23 October 2014.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. 'Panel member'. In: Whose Remembrance (Imperial War Museum/Gateways to the First World War). University of Leeds, United Kingdom 9 December 2014.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. 'Empire and Ethnicity roundtable contribution'. In: In the Shadow of the First World War: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Conflict in Global Perspective. Department of History, University of Manchester, United Kingdom 16 May 2014.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. 'Responses to Black and Indian soldiers in Britain'. In: British Association for Local History, Experiences of World War One: strangers, differences and locality. Senate House, University of London 28 February 2014.

Digital

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2017. Photographs of the Coloured Soldiers and Sailors Club, London.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2017. Cover of The Crisis, Special Soldiers' Number.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2015. Memories of British West Indian Service in the First World War.

Smith, Richard W. P.. 2014. 'How the Indian Army increased support for the Great War in the British West Indies'.