Literary studies: postcolonial literature Books

Book SynopsisIn the accessible and concise A Short History of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Terri Ochiagha asks new questions and brings wider attention to unfamiliar but crucial elements of the story, including new insights into questions of canonicity, and into literary, historiographical, and precolonial aesthetic influences.Trade Review“Ochiagha decries the tokenist approach adopted by some Western academics who overlook the novel’s sophistication and entreats us to appreciate its subtle complexity.” * Times Literary Supplement *“Ochiagha’s work is a seminal piece presenting fresh and illuminating information to literary scholars and Africanists alike, an excellent and laudable update to a timeless classic!” * African Studies Review *

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Book SynopsisAccessible to general and academic readers, Gospel Thrillers interweaves close readings of key themes in a little studied fiction genre with 'real world' tensions over biblical vulnerability, evident in political and cultural debates over the Bible and in popular literature about the Bible and Christian origins.Table of Contents1. The Bible Hunters; 2. Birth of a Genre; 3. Shifting Sands; 4. Texts and Sects; 5. Knowledge Brokers; 6. Academic Thrillers.

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Book SynopsisThis book is a short introduction to Witold Gombrowicz's life and work as one of the most prominent figures in twentieth-century literature and theater, providing intertextual perspectives that allow readers to analyze his short stories, plays, and novels in broad contexts.Gombrowicz (19041969) was a writer and philosopher whose experimental literary works belong to the stream of European existentialism and simultaneously mark the birth of postmodernism. In Gombrowicz's grotesque universe, there is no separation between literature, biography, sexuality, and philosophy. His novels, including Ferdydurke, Trans-Atlantyk, and Pornography, contain autobiographical elements, whereas in his renowned Diary, daily life becomes an object of sophisticated philosophical reflection that links introspection with humor and a gift for observation.Gombrowicz: An Introduction is an approachable guide for students and instructors of Slavic literature a

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Book SynopsisThis monograph analyses Zadie Smith's White Teeth, On Beauty, NW, The Embassy of Cambodia, and Swing Time as trauma fictions that reveal the social, cultural, historical, and political facets of trauma. Starting with Smith's humorous critique of psychoanalysis and her definition of original trauma, this volume explores Smith's challenge of Western theories of trauma and coping, and how her narratives expose the insidiousness of (post)colonial suffering and unbelonging. This book then explores transgenerational trauma, the tensions between remembering and forgetting, multidirectional memory, and the possibilities of the ambiguities and contradictions of the postcolonial and diasporic characters Smith depicts. This analysis discloses Smith's effort to ethically redefine trauma theory from a postcolonial and decolonial standpoint, reiterates the need to acknowledge and work through colonial histories and postcolonial forms of oppression, and crTable of ContentsIntroduction: Postcolonial Traumas: Theories and NarrativesChapter 1. Origins, Original Trauma, and Transgenerational Trauma: The Obsessions and Revelations of HistoryChapter 2. The Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma: The Ambivalences of Forgetting and Remembering in White Teeth, On Beauty, and NWChapter 3. Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory: Dialogic Histories of Slavery in The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing TimeConclusion: The Forms, Complexities, and Contradictions of Postcolonial Trauma

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Book SynopsisThis book examines how Asian American authors since 1945 have deployed the stereotype of Asian American inscrutability in order to re-examine and debunk the stereotype in various ways.Trade Review"With Alterity and Empathy in Post-1945 Asian American Narratives, Hyesu Park adds another important contribution to the growing conversation about race and narrative form. In her work unpacking the figure of the ‘inscrutable Asian,’ Park explores the various ways that rhetorical and cognitive approaches to narrative can help readers to better understand the cultural work of contemporary Asian American narratives, while also compellingly demonstrating the continued need to broaden the canon of narratives upon which new developments in narrative theory are built." James J. Donahue, SUNY Potsdam (Potsdam, NY)Table of ContentsIntroduction: Inscrutability, Asian American narratives, and narrative theoryChapter 1:Representing the inscrutable memory of "comfort women" in Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life (1999)Chapter 2:Scrutability for readerly recognition in Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt (2003)Chapter 3:Visualizing Asian American inscrutability in Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel, Shortcomings (2007)Chapter 4: Contextualizing the affect, ethics, and politics of female silence in Hisaye Yamamoto’s short stories, "Seventeen Syllables" (1949) and "Wilshire Bus" (1950) Chapter 5: Memorializing the inscrutable history of others: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) and GB Tran’s Vietnamerica: A Family’s Journey (2010)Conclusion: Bridging the fields

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Book SynopsisEthnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Situated at the intersection of post-classical narratology and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic, and cultural studies, the contributions to this edited volume interrogate the complex and varied ways in which ethnic American authors use narrative form to engage readers in issues related to race and ethnicity, along with other important identity markers such as class, religion, gender, and sexuality. Importantly, the book also explores how paying attention to the formal features of ethnic American literatures changes our under-standing of narrative theory and how narrative theories can help us to think about author functions and race. The international and diverse group of contributors includes top scholars in narrative theory and in race and ethnic studies, and the texts they analyze concern a wide variety of topics,Table of ContentsIntroduction: Narrative Encounters with Ethnic American LiteraturesAlexa Weik von MossnerPART 1: Narrating Race and Ethnicity across Time and Space Indigenous Time / Indigenous Narratives: The Political Implications of Non-Linear Time in Contemporary Native Fiction James J. Donahue Time(s) of Race: Narrative Temporalities, Epistemic Storytelling, and the Human Species in Ted Chiang Matthias Klestil Polychronic Narration, Trauma, Disenfranchised Grief, and Mario Alberto Zambrano’s Lotería Mario Grill Whole New Worlds: An Exploration of Narrative Strategies Used in Afrodiasporic Speculative Fiction Marlene D. Allen Ahmed PART 2: Haunting Memories: Narrative, Race, and Emotion Emotions that Haunt: Attachment Relations in Lan Samantha Chang’s Fiction W. Michelle Wang Race, Trauma, and the Emotional Legacies of Slavery in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing Marijana Mikić "There Were Strands of Darker Stories": Reading Third-Generation Holocaust Literature as Midrash Stella Setka Stories, Love, and Baklava: Narrating Food in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Culinary Memoirs Alexa Weik von Mossner PART 3: Race, Ethnicity, and Paratexts: Genre Structures and Author Functions Healing Narratives: Historical Representations in Latinx Young Adult Literature Elizabeth Garcia Blood and Soil: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony Patrick Colm Hogan Metaparatextual Satire in Percival Everett’s The Book of Training and Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice Derek C. Maus Author Functions, Literary Functions, and Racial Representations or What We Talk about When We Talk about Diversifying Narrative Studies Jennifer Ho

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first of its kind to significantly concentrate on trans-nation, transnationalism and its dialogue with various nationalisms in South Asia. Taking the absence of discussion on transnationalism in South Asia as a conspicuous lacuna as well as a point of intervention, this book pushes the boundaries of scholarship further by organizing a dialogue between the nation-state and many nationalisms and the emergent method of transnationalism. It opens itself up for many cross-border movements, formulating the trans-South Asian discursive exchange necessitated by contemporary, theoretical upheavals. It looks at such exchanges through the prisms of literature and cinema and traces the many modes of engagement that exist between some of the globally dominant literary and cinematic forms, trying to locate these engagements and negotiations across three geopolitical formations and locations of culture, namely region, nation and trans-nation.Trade Review"Frontiers of South Asian Culture: Nation, Trans-Nation and Beyond is a fascinating collection of essays on postcolonial literature, film, and culture. The collection covers a broad geographic range — and it also incorporates recent theoretical approaches such as ecocriticism, humour studies, food studies, and graphic art criticism."Donna L. Potts, Professor and Chair, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman, USA"A thoroughly engaging and timely intervention in the debates on nationhood, globalism, and regional cultures. Moving consciously away from existing frameworks, Frontiers of South Asian Culture: Nation, Trans-Nation and Beyond offers new insight and provocations on the significance of transnationalism as both a context and methodological approach to literature and cinema. The book’s great value lies in its marshalling of original material and reflections to shed light on the complex entanglements found in India's diverse territorial imaginations."Ranjani Mazumdar, Professor of Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India"In the wake of decolonisation, the process of national identity formation in the independent countries of South Asia inhibited mutual understanding and discouraged collective scrutiny of the human condition. With its emphasis on the entangled cultural and political histories of South Asian locations, regions, and nations, Frontiers of South Asian Culture: Nation, Trans-Nation and Beyond realises a commendable academic milestone." Senath Walter Perera, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka"Frontiers of South Asian Culture: Nation, Trans-Nation and Beyond by Parichay Patra and Amitendu Bhattacharya offers a rich palette of essays that look at a range of cultural practices and texts to flesh out imaginaries of the nation and beyond. Working along literary and cinematic registers, the edited collection confronts the challenges of understanding borders and boundaries, yielding valuable insight on the conundrums of our contemporary existence."Lakshmi Subramanian, Formerly Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India"This is an eclectic collection of scholarly essays that together map the regional imaginary of "South Asia", considering literature and cinema, sometimes regarded as stand-alone media forms, sometimes as driving each other. We see how the trans/national is configured in specific regional locales — Sri Lanka, Goa, Assam, Pondicherry and Bangladesh, besides West Bengal. At the same time, the essays look at flows — of rivers, trains, ideas, and people as they traverse across spaces. This unique volume combines the scholarship of the young as well as the established in the fields of comparative/literary studies and film studies.Nikhila H., Professor, Department of Film Studies, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India."This capacious volume richly extends the very idea of the frontier and space-time — artistically, as well as politically. The comparative framework of the regional-national frees us from the narrow precincts of nationhood and the detached local as well as from the ersatz universality of the global. The porosity of encountering cultural seepage is a tantalizing possibility. Through the lens of the transnational, the volume grapples with the deeper questions of tradition and modernity, style and meaning, space and temporality. An abundant experience."Prasanta Chakravarty, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Delhi, India Table of ContentsList of ContributorsIntroduction- Parichay Patra and Amitendu BhattacharyaPart I: Nation and Its Porous FrontiersChapter 1: The Politics of Spectatorship: Textual Traditions, Cinematograph and the Moral Dilemma of the Natives of Assam in British India (1900–1935)-Kaushik Thakur BhuyanChapter 2: Then and Now: Nation and Transnational Identity in Jyoti Prasad Agarwala’s Joymati (1935) and Jahnu Barua’s Ajeyo (2014)- Asha Kuthari ChaudhuriChapter 3 Humour and Cinema: A Study of Language Politics in Assam-Simona Sarma and Sukrity GogoiChapter 4: The Transnational City of Pondicherry: Elite Indian Identity Crisis and Cortes’ Receding French Image-Andrea RodriguesChapter 5: Cartography of Goa: Analysis of the Tangible Loci of Culture in the Sketches of Mario Miranda - Amrita Biswas Part II: Nation, Cultural Histories, Trans-Nation: The Cinematic Imagi-NationChapter 6: That Which Flows- Moinak BiswasChapter 7: Ray at Large: Cinema In and Out of Literature in Region, Nation, Transnation- Kaushik BhaumikChapter 8: Beckett and Avikunthak: Lineages of the Avant-Garde-Brinda BoseChapter 9: The Partitioning of Bengal, 1971 and National Identity Formation in Tanvir Mokammel’s Films- Fakrul AlamPart III: Nation, Cultural Histories, Trans-Nation: The Literary Imagi-NationChapter 10: Region, Nation, Border: Histories of Land and Water- Supriya ChaudhuriChapter 11: Travelling On: Bengali and English Literatures of Transnational Worlding- Arka ChattopadhyayChapter 12: Capitalist World-Ecology, Food Crisis, and Embodied Aesthetics in in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve- Sourit BhattacharyaChapter 13: Modernity on Wheels: Reading Trains as Sites of Encounter and Disaster - Anuparna MukherjeeChapter 14: "The lights cut out quickly": Nation, Nationalism and City-lit during 1980–1990s- Dibyakusum RayPart IV: South Asian Transactions: Between Subcontinental Flow and Transnational FrictionsChapter 15: Tagorean Cosmopolitanism and Ceylonic Indigenization Movement- Saman M. Kariyakarawane and S. S. A. SenevirathneChapter 16: From Villain to Superhero: Reimaginings of Ravana in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Sri Lanka- Kanchuka DharmasiriIndex

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Book SynopsisThis volume is a collection of ten essays that direct their gaze to the unfolding of contagions in the non-classical contexts of Asia and Africa. Or, to borrow from the title of one of Partha Chatterjeeâs books, they are reflections on the pandemic in most of the world. Featuring many scholars (of the humanities and social sciences) in the Global South, these chapters take as their intellectual focus the political-social as well as the ethical challenges posed by the contagions in the East. Through analyses of literary narratives/films/video games, this Contagion Narratives traces the manufactured narratives of victimization by majority-communities and the lethal divides consequently being drawn between a reconstituted authentic majority and the more vulnerable minority âotherâ in these societies. The essays in this collection are animated by imaginations of liveable alternatives on a planet on the brink. This volume traces lineages to Buchi Emecheta and Rabindranath Tagore r

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Book SynopsisEarly Modern Others highlights instances of challenges to misogyny, racism, atheism, and antisemitism in the early modern period. Through deeply historicizing early modern literature and looking at its political and social contexts, Peter C. Herman explores how early modern authors challenged the biases and prejudices of their age.By examining the works of Thomas More, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger amongst others, Herman reveals that for every -ism in early modern English culture there was an anti-ism pushing back against it. The book investigates others in early modern literature through indigenous communities, women, religion, people of color, and class.This innovative book shows that the early modern period was as complicated and as contradictory as the world today. It will offer valuable insight for anyone studying early modern literature and culture, as well as social justice and intersectionality.Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Thomas More’s Utopia and the "New World"Chapter 2: "I am no child, no babe": The Shrew PlaysChapter 3: "That’s More than We Know": The Crisis of the 1590s in Deloney, Dekker, and ShakespeareChapter 4: The Circulation of Atheism in Early Modern England: Tamburlaine, Selimus, and King Lear Chapter 5: The Religious "Other" in Early Modern England: The Jew of Malta, The Merchant of Venice, and The RenegadoChapter 6: Othello and London’s Africans Works CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisThis edited book offers a collection of fresh and critical essays that explore the representation of the migrant subject in modern and contemporary Arabic literature and discuss its role in shaping new forms of transcultural and transnational identities. The selection of essays in this volume offers a set of new insights on a cluster of tropes: self-discovery, alienation, nostalgia, transmission and translation of knowledge, sense of exile, reconfiguration of the relationship with the past and the identity, and the building of transnational identity. A coherent yet multi-faceted narrative of micro-stories and of transcultural and transnational Arab identities will emerge from the essays: the volume aims at reversing the traditional perspective according to which a migrant subject is a non-political actor.In contrast to many books about migration and literature, this one explores how the migrant subject becomes a specific literary trope, a catalyst of modern alienation, displa

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Book SynopsisThis book centres and explores postcolonial theory, which looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial supremacy. It argues that disability is a constitutive material presence in many postcolonial societies and that progressive disability politics arise from postcolonial concerns. By drawing these two subjects together, this handbook challenges oppression, voicelessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation and postcolonisation and bridges binary debate between global North and the global South.The book is divided into eight sections Setting the Scene Decolonising Disability Studies Postcolonial Theory, Inclusive Development Postcolonial Disability Studies and Disability Activism Postcolonial Disability and Childhood Studies Postcolonial Disability Studies and Education Postcolonial Disability Studies, Gender, Race and Religion C

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Book SynopsisThis book presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological crisis.The Australian continent has seen significant, rapid changes to its cultures and land-use from the impact of British colonial rule, yet there is a rich history of Indigenous land-ethics and cosmological thought. By using the age-old idea of cosmos'the order of the worldto foreground ideas of a good order and chaos, reciprocity and more-than-human agency, this book interrogates the Anthropocene in Australia, focusing on notions of colonisation, farming, mining, bioethics, technology, environmental justice and sovereignty. It offers cosmological readings' of a diverse range of authorsIndigenous and non-Indigenousas a challenge to the Anthropocene's decline-narrative. As a result, it reactivates cosmos' as an ethical vision and a transculturally important counter-concept to the Anthropocene. Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell argues that the arts Trade Review"Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell’s Cosmological Readings of Contemporary Australian Literature is an important new work of Australian ecocriticism. Drawing on recent work on literature and the Anthropocene, Bartha-Mitchell’s book offers a model for reading Australian literature cosmologically. Bartha-Mitchell’s readings emphasise interconnections between beings, agencies and systems that work against the traditional humanistic focus of western prose fiction and offer a critical new dimension to Australian literary studies."Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia"An innovative intervention in the environmental humanities, this thought-provoking study of contemporary Australian literature makes a powerful case for the generative concept of cosmos and, more broadly, for the importance of literary studies within the wider field." Diletta De Cristofaro, Assistant Professor, Northumbria University, UKTable of ContentsIntroduction: Literary Cosmology in the Anthropocene Part 1: CONTEXT / THEORY: From Chaos to Cosmos to Anthropocene? 1. Cosmos within and beyond the Environmental Humanities 2. Cosmos Today: Modern, Transcultural, (Dis)enchanted Part 2: COLONISATION / EXPLOITATION: Reimagining Agriculture and Extraction 3. Remembering the Language of Colonial Agriculture: Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living 4. Resisting Mining and Regenerating Country through the Wiradjuri Language: Tara June Winch’s The Yield Part 3: BIOETHICS / TECHNOLOGY: Revising Human Mastery Narratives 5. Testing the Limits of Apocalyptic Climate Fiction: Briohny Doyle’s The Island Will Sink 6. Reconsidering Evolution and Queering Environmentalism: Ellen van Neerven’s “Water” Part 4: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE / CUSTODIANSHIP: Towards Sovereign Cosmopolitics 7. Remembering the Opposite of Oppression: Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains 8. Aquatious Mobilisation of Indigenous Sovereignty: Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip Conclusion

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Book SynopsisSimultaneously a critique of Foucauldian governmentalist interpretations of neoliberalism and a historical materialist reading of contemporary South Asian fictions, Allegories of Neoliberalism is a probing analysis of literary representations of capitalism's forms of appearance.This book offers critical discussions on the important works of Akhtaruzzaman Elias, Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy, H. M. Naqvi, Mohsin Hamid, Nasreen Jahan, Samrat Upadhyay, and other writers from South Asia and South Asian diaspora.It also advances a re-reading of Karl Marx's Capital through the themes and tropes of literatureone that looks into literary representations of commoditization, monetization, class exploitation, uneven spatial relationship, financialization, and ecological devastation through the lens of the German revolutionary's critique of capitalism.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Allegorizing Neoliberalism2. "Kanna" and the Monetization of Affect 3. The White Tiger and the Subsumption of the Rural4. Home Boy, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the "Empire of Finance" 5. Conclusion: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism

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Book SynopsisTranslation and Decolonisation: Interdisciplinary Approaches offers compelling explorations of the pivotal role that translation plays in the complex and necessarily incomplete process of decolonisation. In a world where translation has historically been a tool of empire and colonisation, this collection shines the spotlight on the potential for translation to be a driving force in decolonial resistance. The book bridges the divide between translation studies and the decolonial turn in the social sciences and humanities, revealing the ways in which translation can challenge colonial imaginaries, institutions, and practice, and how translation opens up South-to-South conversations. It brings together scholars from diverse disciplines and fields, including sociology, literature, languages, migration, politics, anthropology, and more, offering interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives. By examining both the theoretical and practical aspects of this intersection, the chapters

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Book SynopsisThis cross-disciplinary approach to literary reading of any provenance based on an âœexperimental cosmopolitanâ epistemology de- and recontextualizes the texts from the points of view of multiple cultures and historical moments, enriching interpretation and aesthetic experience beyond the backgrounds of the present reader and the origin of a particular literary discourse. Trusting the authority of an author or an âœoriginalâ text and ignoring the fundamental plurilingualism of the literary experience obstructs the wealth of cosmopolitan reading in a globalized and fragmented world. A thorough critique of both local and overarching theories in clear dissent from the binaries of âœdecolonial theoryâ and the overextension of âœnomadic theoryâ supports a precise research and teaching methodology at variance with past trends of Comparative and World Literature. Considering literature as the aestheticized use of language, which is universal, the many analyses provided can be extrapolated

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Book SynopsisExamining a range of South Asian Anglophone diasporic fiction and poetry, this monograph opens a new dialogue between diaspora studies and gender studies. It shows how discourses of diaspora benefit from re-examining their own critical relation to concepts of the maternal and the motherland. Rather than considering maternity as a fixed or naturally given category, it challenges essentialist conceptions and explores mothering as a performative practice which actively produces discursive meaning. This innovative approach also involves an investigation of central metaphors in nationalist and diasporic rhetorics, bringing critical attention to the strategies they employ and the unique aesthetic forms they produce. Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsAbbreviations 1. Introduction: more than one mother 1.1 Gender and nation 1.2 Theories of the maternal 1.3 Theories of diaspora 1.4 Outline of chapters 2. Historical performances: reading Mother India in nationalist discourse and Kipling 2.1 Bharat Mata 2.1.1 Vande Mataram 2.1.2 The mother-as-metaphor 2.1.3 Condensation and transaction 2.1.4 Metaphorical performances 2.2 Kipling’s imperial Mother India 2.2.1 Imperial doublings 2.2.2 The native-born diaspora 3. Citational performances: "Talking major mother country" in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children3.1 Diasporic maternal practices 3.2 Victorian Mothers3.3 The performance of mothering 3.4 ‘De-condensing’ Mother India 3.5 Diasporic bastards 4. Exile performances: Pakistani mother-daughter relationships in Bapsi Sidhwa’sCracking India and Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days. 4.1 Sidhwa’s matricide 4.1.1 Allegorical readings 4.1.2 Hired Mother India 4.2 Suleri’s mother elegy 4.2.1 A poetics of unbelonging 4.2.2 Mother(ing)land 4.2.3 Performances of abjection 5. Maternal performances: mother tongues in Ravinder Randhawa’s A Wicked OldWoman and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane 5.1 Performing the mother tongue 5.2 A wicked old mother 5.3 Herethics and diasporic mothering 5.4 Diasporic seas 5.5 Ali’s coming-of-agency 6. Outlook and conclusion: diasporic maternal aesthetics 6.1 Indo-Caribbean labours 6.2 Retrospects and prospects 7. Appendix8. Works cited 9. Index

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Book SynopsisWorld Literature: Approaches, Practices, and Pedagogy combines theoretical explorations and pedagogy to explore approaches to teaching some of the key concepts, issues, and topics in world literary studies.Recognising the evolving, and at times contested, meanings of âworld literatureâ, this book treats world literature as a mode of reading and one that provides opportunities to create a space for critical discussions and reflections on understanding, unpacking, and at times, challenging, some of the assumptions and practices in world literary studies. Contributors discuss a wide array of topics, including the role of translation and literary marketplace in global circulation of texts, the function, and problematics of paratexts, questions of co-authorship in transnational contexts, debates on major/minor in world literature, cosmopolitanism, and the impact of English as a lingua franca on the development of the field.Accompanied by reading questions, individual and group exercises, as well as suggested further readings, this collection offers a practical resource for instructors and an accessible guide to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking world literature courses in different parts of the world.

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Book SynopsisProfessional historians, schools, colleges and universities are not alone in shaping higher-order understanding of history. The central thesis of this book is the belief historical fiction in text and film shape attitudes towards an understanding of history as it moves the focus from slavery to the enslavedfrom the institution to the personal, families and feminist accounts.In a broader sense, this contributes to a public history. In part, using the quickly growing corpus of neo-slave counterfactual narratives, this book examines the notion of the emerging slavery public history, and the extent to which this is defined by literature, film and other forms of artistic expression, rather than non-fictionpopular or scholarlyand education in history in the school systems. Inter alia, this book looks to the validity of historical fiction in print or in film as a way of understanding history. A focal point of this book is the hypothesis that neo-slave narrativessupported by selectivTrade Review"The human stories authentically leap from the pages eloquently in Grant Rodwell’s latest book. Painstakingly researched and brilliantly told… simply splendid!An account throughout that is sensitive, colourful and compelling. Composed yet again with rare skill by the remarkable man from Oberon. A book of dramatic sweep and great narrative strength."John Ramsland, Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle, AustraliaTable of ContentsContentsAbstractDedicationAcronyms and abbreviationsAcknolwedgementsPrefaceIntroductionChapter 1: From slavery to the enslaved: new paradigms, neo-slave fiction, a shared history and higher-order historical thinkingChapter 2 Slavery and the enslaved: breaking boundaries with neo-slave narrativesChapter 3 Antebellum neo-slave narratives, history and historiography: higher-order thinking and a public historyChapter 4 The enslaved, slavery, the Civil War and ReconstructionChapter 5 Jim Crow and slavery’s immediate aftermathGeneral conclusionsBibliography

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Book SynopsisThe rise of world literature is the most noticeable phenomenon in literary studies in the twenty-first century. However, truly well-known and globally circulating works are all canonical works of European or Western literature, while non-European and even minor European literatures remain largely unknown beyond their culture of origin. World Literature as Discovery: Expanding the World Literary Canon argues that world literature for our time must go beyond Eurocentrism and expand the canon to include great works from non-European and minor European literatures. As much of the world's literature remains untranslated and unknown, the expansion will be an exciting process of discovery. By discussing fundamental questions around canon, circulation, aesthetic values, translation, cosmopolitanism, and the literary universal, Zhang Longxi proposes a new and liberating concept of world literature that will shape world literature worthy of its name. This book speaks foTrade Review"Drawing on his deep knowledge of both Chinese and European literary traditions, Zhang Longxi advances a bracing vision of a non-Eurocentric canon of world literature, one that would build on the self-understandings of the world’s literary cultures rather than imposing Western values and concerns on them. World Literature as Discovery proposes both an expansive discovery of the world’s distinctive traditions and a rediscovery of the aesthetic pleasures that great works offer their readers." David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA, author of What Is World Literature? and Comparing the Literatures "A brilliant reconceptualization of world literature by a scholar that over the past 40 years has been one of the most active, erudite, and at the same time common sensical contributors to the field. Arguing the need for a wider inclusion of non-Western works in world literature while at the same time refusing to side-step the issues of translation and value judgments, Zhang’s volume is a must-read for all scholars and students of literature wanting to keep abreast of what really is at stake in our fast-changing world." Theo D’haen, Professor Emeritus of English, KU Leuven, Belgium, author of World Literature in an Age of Geopolitics"Zhang’s World Literature as Discovery is bound to invigorate the current debate on the importance of value judgements in the discourse of world literature. His is an impassioned and erudite intervention that urges us to reopen the question of the canon and argues for a truly plural world literature that draws its own sustainability from a body of texts far beyond the Western tradition." Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London, UK, author of The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond"Is it possible to have a worldly conversation about literary value – to free discussions of literary merit from their Eurocentric confines and to open our minds to multiple standards of literary judgement? The question is an important one for readers in our time, and Zhang Longxi, equally at home in the European and Chinese traditions (and beyond) is just the scholar to lead us towards an answer." Alexander Beecroft, Jessie Chapman Alcorn Memorial Professor of Foreign Languages, University of South Carolina, USA, author of An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present DayTable of ContentsPreface Goethe and Weltliteratur The Return to (World) Literature Circulation and Value Judgment Canon and the Classic World Literature as Discoveries Language, (Un)translatability and World Literature The Challenge of Writing a World Literary History Literary Universals The Mirror of Enigma and the Mirror of Magic Potion and Poison: Chinese and Shakespearean Dialectics Conclusion: World Literature and Cosmopolitanism BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisMilestones in African Literature offers an accessible guide to ten key moments in African literature. It traces literature in Africa through forms and genres, as well as social and political changes.Toyin Falola embraces the richness of African literature, and considers the oral tradition, pre-colonial literature, apartheid, print media and digital literature, postcolonialism, and migration literature. He explores the realities of African people by drawing from and highlighting peoples' convictions, spirituality, and pasts. The book reveals African literature's capacity to convey cultural, social, and political messages through storytelling, while depicting the social structures and cultural norms that shape these experiences through the examination of perspectives and literary works of African authors.Milestones in African Literature is the ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students interested in African literatures. It will also be invaluabl

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Book SynopsisAfroeuropeans: Identities, Racism, and Resistances reflects on the tensions, ambiguities, and paradoxes of Blackness in Europe.The book addresses relations of domination and modes of racial exclusion, but also Afro-European interventions in the political, social, cultural, and artistic spheres, and the multiple resistances that have sustained Black bodies in the European continent. At the same time as Black histories, cultures, and social conditions are made invisible in hegemonic accounts in Europe, there is a hypervisibility and presence of Black stereotyping in European popular culture. Black identities have become even more conditioned by new mainstream far-right discourses and the tightening immigrant and refugee policies that aïect people of African descent. One of the bookâs most innovative contributions is the attention it gives to Black South European thought, experiences, and resistanceâparticularly in the Portuguese context. This constitutes not only a critique Europeâs pervasive racism and color blindness policies but also makes a significant contribution to a broader understanding of Blackness and racism, extending beyond the U.S. and Northern European contexts.This book is forged in a moment of particularly strong Black intellectual and political vitality. Given the bookâs intersectional and transdisciplinary approach, it will be an important go-to for students and researchers across the humanities and social sciences, as well as to artists, activists, politicians, and journalists.

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Book SynopsisBetween Homelands in Michael Ondaatjeâs Fiction is a comprehensive study of the novels of the Sri Lankan-Canadian author and poet, Michael Ondaatje. This survey of the Booker Prize-winning novelistâs works locates him as a powerful voice that urges globalization and multiculture in a world that is closing its borders. It reconnoitres Ondaatjeâs search for a homeland by cracking open the core of his evocative, inventive, and innovative concepts that undergird his art of storytelling. The contributors in this volume examine themes such as literary cosmopolitanism, Sri Lankan identity, diasporic identity, race and racism, home and belonging, trauma in the Sri Lankan civil war, war games, and uncertainty theory.An important contribution to Ondaatje studies, the book is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of Sri Lankan literature, diasporic and world literatures, South Asian and Canadian studies, cultural studies, postcolonial fiction, and history.

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Book SynopsisThis book considers how ''affect'', the experience of feeling or emotion, has developed as a critical concept within literary studies in different periods and through a range of approaches. Stretching from the classical to the contemporary, the first section of the book, ''Origins'', considers the importance of particular areas of philosophy, theory, and criticism that have been important for conceptualizing affect and its relation to literature. Includes ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, eighteenth-century aesthetics, Marxist theory, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. The chapters of the second section, ''Developments'', correspond to those of the previous section and build on their insights through readings of particular texts. The final ''Applications'' section is focused on contemporary and future lines of enquiry, and revolves around a particular set of concerns: media and communications, capitalism, and an environment of affective relations that extend to ecTrade Review'A seminal body of meticulous, informative, and deftly presented scholarship, Affect and Literature is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to community and academic library Literary Criticism & Theory collections and supplemental curriculum reading lists.' Jim Cox, The Midwest Book ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: affect and literature Alex Houen; Part I. Origins: 1. Poetic fear-related affects and society in Greco-Roman antiquity Dana LaCourse Munteanu; 2. Secondary affect in Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai Stefan Uhlig; 3. Affect and life in Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson John Protevi; 4. Feelings under the microscope: new critical affect Helen Thaventhiran; 5. 'We manufacture fun: capital and the production of affect Ross Wilson; 6. Jacques Lacan's evanescent affects Jean-Michel Rabaté; 7. The durability of affect and the ageing of gay male queer theory Geoff Gilbert; 8. Affect, meaning, becoming, and power: Massumi, Spinoza, Deleuze, and neuroscience Anthony Uhlmann; 9. Translating postcolonial affect Sneja Gunew; 10. Making sorrow sweet: emotion and empathy in the experience of fiction Alison Denham; Part II. Developments: 11. Feeling feelings in early modern England Benedict S. Robinson; 12. Laughable poetry Matthew Bevis; 13. Modernism, formal innovation, and affect in some contemporary Irish novels Derek Attridge; 14. The antihumanist tone Christopher Nealon; 15. Bette Davis's eyes and minoritarian survival: camp, melodrama, and spectatorship Amber Musser; 16. Affective form Ankhi Mukherjee; 17. Subaltern affects Stephen Morton; Part III. Applications: 18. Affect and environment in contemporary ecopoetics Margaret Ronda; 19. Contemporary crisis fictions: twenty-first century disaffection Emily Horton; 20. Shiny happy imperialism: an affective exploration of 'ways of life' in the war on terror Amira Jarmakani; 21. The digital's amodal affect Andrew Murphie; 22. Digital special affects: on exhilaration and the STUN in CGI blockbuster films Eric Jenkins; 23. Cartesian affect Claire Colebrook.

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Book SynopsisThe period from the 1970s to the present day has produced an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of Caribbean writing that has been widely acclaimed. Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970-2020 traces the region''s contemporary writings across the established genres of prose, poetry, fiction and drama into emerging areas of creative non-fiction, memoir and speculative fiction with a particular attention on challenging the narrow canon of Anglophone male writers. It maps shifts and continuities between late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Caribbean literature in terms of innovations in literary form and style, the changing role and place of the writer, and shifts in our understandings of what constitutes the political terrain of the literary and its sites of struggle. Whilst reaching across language divides and multiple diasporas, it shows how contemporary Caribbean Literature has focused its attentions on social complexity and ongoing marginalizations in its continued preoccupations with identity, belonging and freedoms.Trade Review'Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1970–2020 will remain a rich source for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars within Caribbean studies, diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, and performance studies who are interested in the political, cultural, and social life of the literary imagination … this volume functions as a necessary reflection on some of the major developments in Caribbean literary production over the past fifty years.' Jovante Anderson, Journal of West Indian Literature'The new and timely perspectives on migration, gender, and the environment, amongst other topics, enable this series to bring attention to an incredibly diverse canon of writers, literary forms, and historical contexts. In doing so, the volumes invite readers to revisit established figures - with Walcott and Naipaul still looming large - whilst also re-examining Caribbean literary history to include a corpus of voices that are not necessarily anglophone or male-centric. For this reason, the series deserves to lay the foundations of new critical explorations into the heterogeneity and global scope of Caribbean creativity from its roots in the colonial past through to its many fluid and fragmentary strands in the present.' Matthew Whittle, Journal of Postcolonial WritingTable of ContentsIntroduction. Caribbean Assemblages: 1970s-2020 Alison Donnell and Ronald Cummings; Part I. Literary and Generic Transitions: 1. Writing and the Responsibility to Memory: The Role of White Female Planters in Contemporary Caribbean Novels Tanya L. Shields; 2. Caribbean Identities and Diversifying the Creole Mix Shivanee Ramlochan; 3. Carnival, Calypso, and Dancehall Cultures: Making the Popular Political in Contemporary Caribbean Writing Emily Zobel Marshall; 4. Life Writing, Gender and Caribbean Narrative 1970-2015: Itinerant Self-Making in the Postcolonial Caribbean Denise Decaires Narain; 5. Forwarding Dubpoetry in this Generation: A Grassroots Performance and Neo-Literary Genre in Transition Susan Gingell; 6. Postcolonial Ruins, Reconstructive Poetics: Caribbean Urban Imaginaries Christopher Winks; 7. Reimagining Caribbean Time and Space: Speculative Fiction Rebecca Romdhani; 8. Drama and Performance Justine Mcconnell; 9. Here are the Others: Caribbean Creative Nonfiction Kei Miller; 10. 'Let every child run wild': Cultural Identity and the Role of the Child in Caribbean Children's and Young Adult Fiction Aisha Takiyah Spencer; Part II. Cultural and Political Transitions: 11. Caribbean Feminist Criticism: Towards a New Canon of Caribbean Feminist Theory and Theorizing Simone A. James Alexander; 12. Writing of and for a Revolution Alison Donnell and Nalini Mohabir; 12. Digital Yards: Caribbean Writing on Social Media and Other Digital Platforms Kelly Baker Josephs; 13. Developing and Sustaining Literary Publics: Prizes, Festivals, and New Writing Ifeona Fulani; Part III. The Caribbean Region in Transition: 14. The Caribbean and Britain Sarah Lawson Welsh; 15. Acts of Trespass and Collapsing Borders: Alternate Landscapes in Contemporary Caribbean-Canadian Literature Camille A. Isaacs; 16. The Caribbean and the United States Jocelyn Fenton Stitt; 17. The Caribbean and the Tourist Gaze Supriya M. Nair; 18. Caribbean Subjects in the World Kezia A. Page; Part IV. Critical Transitions: 19. Visuality in Caribbean Literature and Visual Culture Marta Fernández Campa; 20. From Counter-Textuality to Intertextuality: Continuing the Caribbean Canon Emily L. Taylor; 21. Caribbean Eco-Poetics: The Categorial Imperative and Indifference in the Caribbean Environment Keja L. Valens; 22. Sexual Subjects Faizal Deen and Ronald Cummings; 23. Caribbean Literature and Literary Studies: Past, Present, and Future Alison Donnell; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch marking humanity''s alteration of the Earth: its rock structure, environments, atmosphere. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Anthropocene offers the most comprehensive survey yet of how literature can address the social, cultural, and philosophical questions posed by the Anthropocene. This volume addresses the old and new literary forms - from novels, plays, poetry, and essays to exciting and evolving genres such as ''cli-fi'', experimental poetry, interspecies design, gaming, weird, ecotopian and petro-fiction, and ''new'' nature writing. Studies range from the United States to India, from Palestine to Scotland, while addressing numerous global signifiers or consequences of the Anthropocene: catastrophe, extinction, ''fossil capital'', warming, politics, ethics, interspecies relations, deep time, and Earth. This unique Companion offers a compelling account of how to read literature through the Anthropocene and of how literatuTrade Review'Recommended.' J. Bilbro, Choice MagazineTable of ContentsIntroduction: With or Without Us: Literature and the Anthropocene John Parham; Prologue: Earth, Anthropocene, Literary Form; 1. Earth Laura Dassow Walls; 2.Data/Anecdote Sean Cubitt; Part I. Anthropocene Form: 3. Poetry Mandy Bloomfield; 4. The Novel Astrid Bracke; 5. Popular Fiction Saba Pirzadeh; 6. The Essay Byron Caminero-Santangelo; 7. Theatre and Performance Sabine Wilke; 8. Interspecies Design Stanislav Roudavski; 9. Digital Games Alenda Y. Chang; Part II. Anthropocene Themes: 10. Catastrophe David Higgins and Tess Somervell; 11. Animals Eileen Crist; 12. Humans Hannes Bergthaller; 13. Fossil Fuel Sam Solnick; 14. Warming Andreas Malm; 15. Ethics Zainor Izat Zainal; 16. Interspecies Heather Alberro; 17. Deep Time Visible Pippa Marland.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines tragedy and tragic philosophy from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present day. It explores key themes in the links between suffering and ethics through postcolonial literature. Ato Quayson reconceives how we think of World literature under the singular and fertile rubric of tragedy. He draws from many key works Oedipus Rex, Philoctetes, Medea, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear to establish the main contours of tragedy. Quayson uses Shakespeare''s Othello, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Tayeb Salih, Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison, Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee to qualify and expand the purview and terms by which Western tragedy has long been understood. Drawing on key texts such as The Poetics and The Nicomachean Ethics, and augmenting them with Frantz Fanon and the Akan concept of musuo (taboo), Quayson formulates a supple, insightful new theory of ethical choice and the impediments against it. This is a major book from a leading critic in literary studies.Trade Review'… [This book] is a powerful insight, suggestive enough, one would have thought, to fuel a book-length inquiry into the distinctiveness of postcolonial tragedy.' Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Modern Philology'The book's connections to the fields of literature, philosophy, and history are apparent, as is its layered, meticulously crafted thesis. Relevant and applicable to a variety of critical reassessments in various fields within the humanities. Recommended.' J. Neal, Choice'The contribution of Ato Quayson's book is undoubtedly found in the dialogue and the pooling of plural knowledge, reporting on the suffering and ethnic discriminations of which colonized populations have been victims.' Jean Zaganiaris, Anabases (translated from French)JeanTable of Contents1. Introduction. Tragedy and the maze of moments; 2. Shakespeare: Ethical cosmopolitanism and Shakespeare's Othello; 3. Chinua Achebe: History and the conscription to colonial modernity in Chinua Achebe's rural novels; 4. Wole Soyinka: Ritual dramaturgy and the social imaginary in Wole Soyinka's tragic theatre; 5. Tayeb Salih: Archetypes, self-authorship, and melancholia: Tayeb Salih's Seasons of Migration to the North; 6. Toni Morrison: Form, freedom and ethical choice in Toni Morrison's Beloved; 7. J. M. Coetzee: On moral residue and the affliction of second thoughts: J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians; 8. Arundhati Roy: Enigmatic variations, language games and the arrested bildungsroman: Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things; 9. Samuel Beckett: Distressed embodiment and the burdens of boredom: Samuel Beckett's Postcolonialism; 10. Conclusion: Postcolonial tragedy and the question of method.

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Book SynopsisThe Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies provides scholars and students of American Studies with theoretical and applied essays that help to define Transnational American Studies as a discipline and practice.In more than 30 essays, the volume offers a history of the concept of the transnational and takes readers from the Barbary frontier to Guam, from Mexico's border crossings to the intifada's contested zones. Together, the essays develop new ways for Americanists to read events, images, sound, literature, identity, film, politics, or performance transnationally through the work of diverse figures, such as Confucius, Edward Said, Pauline Hopkins, Poe, Faulkner, Michael Jackson, Onoto Watanna, and others. This timely volume also addresses presidential politics and interpictorial US history from Lincoln in Africa, to Obama and Mandela, to Trump. The essays, written by prominent global Americanists, as well as the emerging scholars shaping the fTable of ContentsIntroduction: Recognizing Transnational American Studies 1. Collaboration in Transnational American Studies Part 1: Theorizing Transnational American Studies 2. Reorienting the Transnational: Transatlantic, Transpacific, and Antipodean 3. Worlding America and Transnational American Studies 4. Archipelagic American Studies: An Open and Comparative Insularity 5. The Transnational Poetics of Edward Said: Dangerous Affiliations & Impossible Comparisons 6. The Pacific Turn: Transnational Asian American Studies Part 2: Culture and Performance: Histories and Reciprocities 7. Cultural Performance and Transnational American Studies 8. The Barbary Frontier and Transnational Allegories of Freedom 9. Stages of Crossing: Transnational Indigenous Futures 10. The Assembling of Trans-Indigènitude Through International Circuits of Poetry 11. Traveling Sounds: Haitian Vodou, Michael Jackson, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers Part 3: Translating Texts and Transnationalizing Contexts 12. Translating Poe in New York in the 1880s: Or, Poe’s Other Transnationalism 13. Confucius and America: The Moral Constitution of Statecraft 14. Translations of American Cultural Politics into the Context of Post-war Japan 15. A Mixed Legacy: Chinoiserie and Japonisme in Onoto Watanna’s A Japanese Nightingale 16. Gender and Transnational American Studies 17. Ethiopianism, Gender, and Transnationalism in Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood 18. Transnationalism, Autobiography, and Criticism: The Spaces of Women’s Imagination Part 4: Political Imaginaries and Transnational Images of the Political 19. Iconography, Interpictoriality, and Transnational American Studies 20. The Visual Aesthetics of Privacy in American Presidential Politics and its Transatlantic Influence 21. Lincoln in Africa 22. Laws of Forgiveness: Obama, Mandela, Derrida 23. Visual Intertextuality and Transnational American Studies: Revisiting American Exceptionalism 24. Post-Truth = Post-Narrative? Reading the Narrative Liminality of Transnational Right-Wing Populism 25. American Realities: A European Perspective on Trump’s America Part 5: Remapping Geographies and Genres 26. The Performance of American Popular Culture: Rhetoric and Symbolic Forms in American Western Movies 27. Border Encounters: Theorizing the US-Mexico Border as Transa 28. Transnational and Intersectional Implications of the Intifada 29. Guam, Un-Inc.; or Craig Santos Perez’s Transterritorial Challenge to American Studies as Usual 30. Post-Apocalyptic Geographies and Structural Appropriation 31.Thinking After the Hemispheric: The Planetary Expanse of Transnational American Writing

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Book SynopsisJokes have always been part of African culture, but never have they been so blended with the strains and gains of the contemporary African world as today. The book considers the pervasive phenomenon of jokes and their performance across Africa. Trade ReviewThis is not just another book about Africa. It is a splendid book by scholars who know this Africa that is often glossed over by the so-called experts. It is about the other Africa, ignored but unbowed. In one essay after the other, the eloquence of this Africa speaks to us across different media, asking us to rethink this Africa intimately and wisely. This is a rare collection of essays about joke and joking in Africa. No Africanist must do without it. Onookome Okome, University of Alberta, CanadaTable of ContentsIntroduction Part I ‘JOKING ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT’ 1. (Re)Imagining the Postcolony in Kenya’s The XYZ Show Joke-Cartoons, Remmy Shiundu Barasa 2. Nigeria’s 2015 Presidential Elections and the Rise of "Comicast", Ignatius Chukwumah 3. Joking About the Government: A Close Reading of the Moroccan Comic Show: ‘The School of the Naughty’, Zakariae Bouhmala Part II TRADITIONAL FORMS AND (POST)MODERN CONTEXTS 4. Ehwe-Ejẹ: Art and Humour in Urhobo Joke-Performance, Peter E. Omoko 5. Aesthetics of Anganga Afiki’s Video Joke-Performance in Malawi, Smith Likongwe 6. Joke-Performance and the Tiv Cultural Context of Satirizing and Appraising Postmodernity, Godwin Aondofa Ikyer7. Egyptian Satire in Modern Media Age, Sebastian Gadomski Part III STREET JOKES 8. (Con)text and Performance of Mchongoano: An Urban Youth Joke Genre in Kenya, Wangari Mwai, David Kimongo and Charles Kebaya 9. Joke-Performance in Egypt: Halah and Kouta Hamra, Heba M. Sharobeem Part IV SEX AND GENDER 10. The Aesthetics of the Ugly: Perspectives on Degrading Online Sex Jokes in Kenya, Felix A. Orina and Fred W. Simiyu 11. Dorika’s Metamorphosis: The Allusive Potency of a Comic Character, Cheela Himutwe K. Chilala 12. "From the ‘Beautiful’ to the ‘Bold’: A Linguistic Analysis of Some Doaa Farouk’s Humorous Texts", Mona Eid Saad Part V STAND-UP COMEDY 13. Severity in Hilarity: Appraising the Satirical Value of Stand-up Comedy in Nigeria, Samuel O. Igomu 14. Ideological Undertones in Mediatised Comedy in ‘Churchill Live’ Show of Kenya, Khaemba Josephine Mulindi & Michael Mule Ndonye

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Book SynopsisPostcolonial Studies is more often found looking back at the past, but in this brand new book, Bill Ashcroft looks to the future and the irrepressible demands of utopia. The concept of utopia whether playful satire or a serious proposal for an ideal community is examined in relation to the postcolonial and the communities with which it engages. Studying a very broad range of literature, poetry and art, with chapters focussing on specific regions Africa, India, Chicano, Caribbean and Pacific this book is written in a clear and engaging prose which make it accessible to undergraduates as well as academics. This important book speaks to the past and future of postcolonial scholarship.Table of Contents1. Utopia, Travel and Empire 2. Heimat Anticipation and Postcolonial Literatures 3. The Ambiguous Necessity of Utopia 4. Remembering the Future: Time and Utopia in African Literature 5. Beyond the Nation-State 6. Writing and Re-Writing India 7. Borderland Heterotopia: Aztlan and the Chicano Nation 8. Archipelago of Dreams: Utopianism in Caribbean Literature 9. Oceanic Hope: Utopianism in the Pacific 10. Settler Colony Utopianism

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first in-depth exploration of the relationship between Latin American and European modernisms during the long twentieth century. Drawing on comparative, historical, and postcolonial reading strategies (including archival research), it seeks to reenergize the study of modernism by putting the spotlight on the cultural networks and aesthetic dialogues that developed between European and non-European writers, including Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo, Roberto Bolaño, Julio Cortázar, Samuel Beckett, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, and Malcolm Lowry. The book explores a wide range of texts that reflect these writers' complex concerns with questions of exile, space, empire, colonization, reception, translation, human subjectivity, and modernist experimentation. By rethinking modernism comparatively and by placing this intricate web of cultural interconnections within an expansive transnational (and transcontinentalTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Pablo Neruda’s Transnational Modernist Networks: Colombo-Madrid-London-Buenos Aires 2. Empire and Commerce in Latin America: Historicising Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out 3. Whose Joyce? Whose Modernism? Borges, Bolaño, and the Question of the ‘Ulyssean’ Novel4. The Reluctant Translator: Beckett’s Road to Mexico (via Paz)5. The Politics of Death in Mexico: Manet, Lowry, Bolaño and the Ghost of Emperor MaximilianCoda: Towards Modernist Dialogues in the Global South

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Book SynopsisAdam Kuper's iconoclastic intellectual history argues that the idea of primitive society is a western myth. The primitive is imagined as the opposite of the civilised. But this is a protean myth. As ideas about civilisation change, so the image of primitive society must be adjusted. By way of fascinating account of classic texts in anthropology, ancient history and law, Kuper reveals how this myth underpinned academic research and inspired political programmes. Its ancestry is traced back to classical western beliefs about barbarians and savages, and Kuper also tackles the latest version of the myth, the idea of a global identity of indigenous peoples. The Reinvention of Primitive Society is a key text in the history of anthropology, and will interest anyone who has puzzled about the very idea of primitive society and so, by implication, about civilisation.Table of ContentsPART ONE: THE IDEA OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY1. The Myth of Primitive Society2. Barbarian, Savage, Primitive PART TWO: ANCIENT LAW, ANCIENT SOCIETY AND TOTEMISM3. Henry Maine’s Patriarchal Theory 4. Lewis Henry Morgan and Ancient Society 5. The Question of Totemism PART THREE: EVOLUTION AND DIFFUSION – BOAS, RIVERS AND RADCLIFFE-BROWN6. The Boasians and the Critique of Evolutionism 7. From Rivers to Radcliffe-Brown PART FOUR: DESCENT AND ALLIANCE8. Descent Theory: a Phoenix From the Ashes 9. Towards the Intellect: Alliance Theory and Totemism PART FIVE: BACK TO THE BEGINNING10. The return of the native 11. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThis book considers how contemporary British children's books engage with some of the major cultural debates of recent years, and how they resonate with the current preoccupations and tastes of the white mainstream British reading public. A central assumption of this volume is that Britain's imperial past continues to play a key role in its representations of race, identity, and history. The insistent inclusion of questions relating to colonialism and power structures in recent children's novels exposes the complexities and contradictions surrounding the fictional treatment of race relations and ethnicity.Postcolonial children's literature in Britain has been inherently ambivalent since its cautious beginnings: it is both transgressive and authorizing, both undercutting and excluding. Grzegorczyk considers the ways in which children's fictions have worked with and against particular ideologies of race. The texts analyzed in this collection portray ethnic minorities as Trade Review"...the book is a successful survey, deftly bringing together texts that deserve much more attention than they are receiving, both in terms of scholarship and children’s literature courses, which too often bear the signs of an overly rigid adherence to prevailing definitions of what counts as children’s literature."- Heather Snell, University of Winnipeg, in Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 9.1 (2017)Table of Contents1. The Politics of Children’s Literature 2. The Empire Within: Migrant and Post-Migrant Coming-of-Age Novels 3. Rewriting Colonial Histories in Historical Fictions For the Young: From Below and Above 4. "Empires of the Mind": Intersections of Children’s Fantasy and Postcolonialism 5. The (Post)Colonial Exotic: Representing the Other in Adventure Stories for the Young

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Book SynopsisPostcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance examines films of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries from postcolonial countries around the globe. In the mid twentieth century, the political reality of resistance and decolonization lead to the creation of dozens of new states, forming a backdrop to films of that period. Towards the century's end and at the dawn of the new millennium, film continues to form a site for interrogating colonization and decolonization, though against a backdrop that is now more neo-colonial than colonial and more culturally imperial than imperial. This volume explores how individual films emerged from and commented on postcolonial spaces and the building and breaking down of the European empire. Each chapter is a case study examining how a particular film from a postcolonial nation emerges from and reflects that nation's unique postcolonial situation. This analysis of one nation's struggle with its coloniality allows each essay tTrade Review"This volume of essays brilliantly creates the groundwork for a truly international discussion. Film and its centrality to the ongoing colonial and postcolonial debates in and between countries across the globe is its focus. The many scholarly and accessible essays here will open readers’ eyes to the truly global reach of film, and to the urgency of creating equitable postcolonial cultures." – Lyn McCredden, Deakin University, Australia"This collection of essays engages with traditional discourses in postcolonial studies in the light of recent developments pertaining to globalization, a post-9/11 security planet, Islamic terrorism, infra-nationalisms, and intense nomadism of populations. It is long awaited." – Anustup Basu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USATable of ContentsIntroduction: New Perspectives on Postcolonial Film Rebecca Weaver-Hightower Part I: New Readings of Twentieth Century Anti-Colonial Resistance Narratives 1. Yesterday’s Mujahiddin: Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) Nicholas Harrison 2. The Sound of Broken Memory: Assia Djebar’s The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1977) Sarah E. Mosher 3. Approximate Others: Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977) Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield 4. Life as an Ocean: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Puppetmaster (1993) Stephen Spence Part II: Millennial Tropes of NeoEmpire 5. Shifting Sands, Imaginary Space, and National Identity: Cédric Klapisch’s Peut-être (1999) Jehanne-Marie Gavarini 6. No Chains on Feet or Mind: Jean-Claude Flamand Barny’s Nèg Maron (2005) Meredith Robinson 7. A Cinema of Conviviality: Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne (2006) Corinn Columpar 8. Déjà vu All Over Again: Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (2007) Cynthia Sugars Part III: New Imaginations of Neo-Postcolonialism 9. Identity and The Politics of Space: Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven (2007) Vuslat Demirkoparan 10. Space and Cultural Memory: Te-Shen Wei’s Cape No.7 (2008) Yu-wen Fu 11. The Postcolonial Hybrid: Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009) Rebecca Weaver-Hightower 12. The Marginal Interventionist Cinema of Budhan Theatre: Dakxin Bajrange Chhara’s The Lost Water (2008/2010) Henry Schwarz 13. Afterword: History, Empire, Resistance Ella Shohat and Robert Stam

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