Current Publication Projects

Currenlty, I am working a monograph titled The Cinematic Slave Narrative. A Journey from Page to Screen. The book explores the increase in slave films in recent years and traces the cross-generic development of nineteenth-century slave narratives into their contemporary cinematic versions. Continuities and changes in the (self-) representation of African Americans are interrogated in several such cinematic slave narratives; for example, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (2016). In particular, I look at representations of race and the network of intertextual sources that influences these films and TV shows. Key areas here include the representation of slavery, gender, the black body and sexual violence on and off screen. Assessing the close connection between the different narrative forms across three centuries, my research shows filmmakers of cinematic slave narratives to be modern-day mediators of the slave experience, similar to those of their literary predecessors. The Cinematic Slave Narrative. A Journey from Page to Screen therefore explores how motivations behind the production of these films reflect a recurring social phenomenon reminiscent of those underpinning nineteenth-century abolitionism and the twentieth-century Civil Rights movement. Thus, this book examines the effects of mediatisation on the representation of blackness and identity, as instantiated by the experiences of slavery and mediatised Othering, and the tools used to convey these to a twenty-first-century audience. I argue that, despite increasing historical distance, slave narratives continue to be relevant as a commemoration of the African-American experience and a commentary on slavery and its present-day legacy.

Recent Publications

Upcoming Publications

Schroeter, Caroline. “From Griffith to Parker: Constructing and reconstructing race and the history of the US South in The Birth of a Nation (1915-2016).” Southern History on Screen: Race and Rights, 1976-2016, edited by Bryan Jack, UP of Kentucky,  December 2018.

---. “African-American Slavery in Colonial New England.” Race and Ethnicity in the United States: From Pre-contact to the Present, edited by Russell Lawson. Greenwood, 2018

---. “Racism and Slavery in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.” Race and Ethnicity in the United States: From Pre-contact to the Present, edited by Russell Lawson. Greenwood, 2018.

---. “Racism in America in the 19th century.” Race and Ethnicity in the United States: From Pre-contact to the Present, edited by Russell Lawson. Greenwood, 2018.

---. “Racism in America in the 20th century.” Race and Ethnicity in the United States: From Pre-contact to the Present, edited by Russell Lawson. Greenwood, 2018.

---. "Donald Bogle's Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks." Review of Bogle,Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Updated and Expanded 5th Edition. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 13 (2018).

--- "Michael Gillespie's Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film." Rev. of Gillespie, Michael Boyce. Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film. Durnham: Duke U, 2016. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 14 (2018).

Other Writing Projects:

• Co-Editor-In-Chief of Aigne Journal

• Co-Editor of Issue 13 of Alphaville Journal, "Screening Race: Constructions and Reconstruction of Twenty-First Century Media” (July 2017)

• Reports Editor of Issue 12 of Alphaville Journal (Winter 2016)