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Performing Identities and Utopias of Belonging consists of sixteen essays, reflecting the current conflicted debate on the ontology, constructiveness and affect of categories of ascribed social identity such as gender, ethnicity, race and nation, in the context of British, Irish and North American cultural landscapes. They address the many ways in which these communities of belonging are imagined, iterated, performed, questioned, and deconstructed in literature, cinema and visual culture; they also support or counter claims about the enhanced value of social identity in the expression of the self in the light of the present debates that surround the contested post-identity turn in cultural s...
This book introduces readers to the rich discipline of Africana Studies, reflecting on how it has developed over the last fifty years as an intellectual enterprise for knowledge production about Africa and the African diaspora. The African world has always had a wealth of indigenous knowledge systems, but for the greater part of the scholarly history, hegemonic Western epistemologies have denied the authenticity of African indigenous ways of knowing. The post-colonial era has seen steady and deliberate efforts to expand the frontiers of knowledge about black people and their societies, and to Africanize such bodies of knowledge in all fields of human endeavor. This book reflects on how the m...
Aquest llibre proposa una lectura feminista dialògica de Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Meridel Le Sueur i Mikhail Bakhtin. La primera part està dedicada al relat curt, considerat un dels aspectes oblidats per Bakhtin. El gènere sexual ('gender'), un altre dels seus oblits, és la base fonamental d'aquesta investigació. Un dels arguments que l'autora defensa és que els híbrids artístics de Gilman i Le Sueur fan impossible que se les confine dins d'un sol gènere literari o sexual. En la segona part s'estudia com la saga deconstructivista de Gilman com el bildungsroman feminista de Le Sueur serveixen per a corregir i expandir la teoria bakhtiniana. Entre altres molts aspectes, els personatges femenins estudiats encarnen el subjecte parlant femení. La tercera part avalua les comunitats de dones creades per la ficció de Le Sueur i Gilman i el seu llegat per a les teories feministes i bakhtinianes. El treball (in)conclou proposant un avanç de la 'dialogia feminista' a una 'pràctica dialògica del feminisme', on totes les perspectives feministes apareixen com a gèneres literaris/veus en un diàleg dialògic.
In Challenging Canada Gabriele Helms examines novels by Jeannette Armstrong, Joy Kogawa, Daphne Marlatt, Sky Lee, Aritha van Herk, Thomas King, and Margaret Sweatman. As resistance literature, these novels question the idea of a homogeneous Canadian culture based on the idea of "a peaceable kingdom." Helms shows how narrative techniques can contribute to or impede a text's challenges to hegemonic discourses and social injustices; novels become valuable sources for cultural studies because cultural experiences are translated into and meanings are produced by their narrative forms.Challenging Canada is the first book-length study to bring a Bakhtinian approach to bear on Canadian literature. G...
Robert A. Ferguson investigates the nature of loneliness in American fiction, from its mythological beginnings in Rip Van Winkle to the postmodern terrors of 9/11. At issue is the dark side of a trumpeted American individualism. The theme is a vital one because a greater percentage of people live alone today than at any other time in U.S. history. The many isolated characters in American fiction, Ferguson says, appeal to us through inward claims of identity when pitted against the social priorities of a consensual culture. They indicate how we might talk to ourselves when the same pressures come our way. In fiction, more visibly than in life, defining moments turn on the clarity of an inner ...
This volume captures the spirit of collaboration and innovation that its authors bring into the classroom, as well as to groundbreaking undergraduate programs and initiatives. Coming from diverse points of view and twenty different disciplines, the contributors illuminate the often perplexing debates about what matters most in higher education today. Each chapter tells a unique story about creating vital pedagogical arenas that have the potential to transform teaching and learning for both faculty and students. These exploratory spaces include courses under construction, cross-college and interdisciplinary collaborations, general education reform initiatives, and fresh perspectives on studen...
First Published in 1991. This is Volume 22 of the Source Books on Education series. Politically speaking the study of foreign languages and cultures helps maintain a strong competitive position in an increasingly global marketplace. It was hard to imagine in 1957 that the launching of a Soviet rocket would push the United States into its greatest investment ever in foreign language education. As American policy-makers attempted to play catch-up with our brothers and sisters behind the iron curtain, this country infused federal dollars into extensive foreign language teacher training and the creation of new foreign language educational programs. As suddenly as federal support was given, however, so was it taken away; and its withdrawal was responsible for one of the darkest periods in the history of foreign language education in America. Drawing on the expertise of a number of the nation's most experienced and creative foreign language educators, this volume, edited by Ellen S. Silber, addresses some of the crucial problems we face in foreign language education today.
Philosophical exploration of Jamaica Kincaid’s entire literary oeuvre.
This book brings a new lens to the work of Agatha Christie through a series of close readings which challenge the official solutions by Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This book's approach interweaves two core ideas: first, it explores the importance of French critic Pierre Bayard’s self-styled ‘detective criticism’; second, it takes detective criticism in a new direction by refocusing on the beginnings of Agatha Christie’s novels. In this way, the book counters the end-orientation that has traditionally dominated the reading experience of, and critical response to, detective fiction by exploring the potential of the beginning to host other interpretations and stories. Offering a new way of reading detective fiction, this book is a mixture of narratology and detective criticism, and deploys it in the form of radical new readings of a number of Christie’s most famous works. This illuminating text will interest students and scholars of crime and detective fiction, literary studies and comparative literature.
A psychological analysis of young female aggression notes the pervasiveness of negative women stereotypes in fairy tales and pop culture, examining the ways in which society reinforces and nurtures mean behavior in girls.