This week's seminar focused on Pamela Colman Smith's Annancy Stories, a series of African/Jamaican folktales published in 1899. Pamela Colman Smith was an author, illustrator, and publisher born to an American father and Jamaican mother. The Annancy stories is a transatlantic text unlike the other texts from previous weeks focuses on stories that originate outside of Britain. The Annancy stories originated in West Africa and were brought to Jamaica by enslaved Africans through the British slave trade.

I found this week's class very interesting on The Annancy Stories and Pamela Colman Smith as a probable mixed-race, female illustrator and storyteller. Now more than ever, it is important to decolonize Victorian studies that are conventionally white-eurocentric based and study texts that were also created during the Victoria 'era' albeit, outside of England. I enjoyed Professor Kooistra's mini-presentation on Pamela Colman Smith and her contribution to the Celtic Revival in Ireland and her work in illustrating folk tales.

Through our discussion of the Annancy Stories by Pamela Colman Smith, I found the text to be a perfect example of how an image, although potentially a direct reflection of its text, can add so much significant meaning that the words lone never would have brought out.