Ian Baucom is a scholar of twentieth century British and postcolonial literature and culture. Is the director of the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. His current project is tentatively titled The Disasters of War: On Inimical Life. Postcolonial analyst.
 

"The Zong and its cargo of four hundred forty slaves sailed from the coast of Africa on September 6, 1781. What subsequently took place aboard that ship, what marked its voyage out for Granville Sharp's particular attention, what convinced him that these slaves' experience of the middle passage was anything but typical, what has made this voyage the subject of this book as opposed to any of the thousands of other such voyages, was to become widely known within the next few years"

— Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic