This book examines the representation of penal colonies both historically and in contemporary culture, across an array of media. Exploring a range of geographies and historical instances of the penal colony, it seeks to identify how the ‘penal colony’ as a widespread phenomenon is as much ‘imagined’ and creatively instrumentalized as it pertains to real sites and populations. It concentrates on the range of ‘media’ produced in and around penal colonies both during their operation and following their closures. This approach emphasizes the role of cross-disciplinary methods and approaches to examining the history and legacy of convict transportation, prison islands and other sites of exile. It develops a range of methodological tools for engaging with cultures and representations of incarceration, detention and transportation. The chapters draw on media discourse analysis, critical cartography, museum and heritage studies, ethnography, architectural history, visual culture including film and comics studies and gaming studies. It aims to disrupt the idea of adopting linear histories or isolated geographies in order to understand the impact and legacy of penal colonies. The overall claim made by the collection is that understanding the cultural production associated with this global phenomenon is a necessary part of a wider examination of carceral imaginaries or ‘penal spectatorship’ (Brown, 2009) past, present and future. It brings together historiography, criminology, media and cultural studies.

Sophie Fuggle is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Studies and Cultural Heritage at Nottingham Trent University, UK, and teaches on the MA in Museum and Heritage Development programme.

 

Charles Forsdick is James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has published on a range of subjects, including travel writing, colonial history, postcolonial and world literature, and the memorialisation of slavery.

 

Katharina Massing is Senior Kecturer at Nottingham Trent University, UK and Course Leader of the MA in Museum and Heritage Development programme. 

​"Framing the Penal Colony is an innovative and timely edited volume that pushes boundaries by presenting the colonial prison in a variety of guises, including as a material, conceptual, and spatially-situated institution with legacies that resonate to present day. Bringing together a vast array of interdisciplinary approaches, from geography and history through to visual arts and museology, it provides richly illustrated case-studies, nuanced theoretical standpoints and poignant comparatives that dissect the specifics of how the penal colony had been reported, explored, re/framed, and creatively encountered. Simultaneously an enchanting and horrifying read, Framing the Penal Colony is an important text that reveals the complex and enduring role of the colonial prison in imagining, absenting and controlling the colonized other." (-- Professor Laura McAtackney, Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork, Ireland)

"At the confluence of history, geography, literature, heritage and art practice, this volume offers an important and salutary contribution to the dark subject of the penal colony. Taken together, the chapters build an expansive springboard for future research, as contributors illuminate the spaces, practices and legacies of an idea whose sly and sprawling reach continues to influence our institutions and our lives." (– Dr Alexis Bergantz, RMIT University, Australia; winner of the 2022 NSW Premier's Australian History Award)

"In its examination of the multiple ways in which penal colonies have been represented, imagined and reimagined, this expertly woven collection, broad in its geographical and methodological scope, demonstrates that the penal colony should not be easily dismissed as a symptom of a bygone colonial past. Situating contemporary modes of extraterritorial detention within a broader history of deportation and penal transportation, this book is essential reading in understanding the legacies of the penal colony and how they continue to define modern carceral practices and their often neo-colonial, racist underpinnings." (– Dr Jonathan Lewis, Bangor University, UK)

Provides an interdisciplinary and transnational approach to legacy of convict transportation Explores how the penal colony evokes specific ideas of space & identity via documentary and fictional representation Focusses on media that have previously attracted little critical attention & provides methodological tools