Transcultural English studies : theories, fictions, realities / edited by Frank Schulze-Engler and Sissy Helff ; with editorial assistance from Claudia Perner and Christine Voigt-William.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Helff, Sissy.

Schulze-Engler, Frank, 1957-

Series:

ASNEL papers ; 12.

Cross/cultures ; 102.

ASNEL papers ; 12

Cross/cultures ; 102

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Multiculturalism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (486 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Rodopi, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What is most strikingly new about the transcultural is its sudden ubiquity. Following in the wake of previous concepts in cultural and literary studies such as creolization, hybridity, and syncretism, and signalling a family relationship to terms such as transnationality, translocality, and transmigration, ‘transcultural’ terminology has unobtrusively but powerfully edged its way into contemporary theoretical and critical discourse. The four sections of this volume denote major areas where ‘transcultural’ questions and problematics have come to the fore: theories of culture and literature that have sought to account for the complexity of culture in a world increasingly characterized by globalization, transnationalization, and interdependence; realities of individual and collective life-worlds shaped by the ubiquity of phenomena and experiences relating to transnational connections and the blurring of cultural boundaries; fictions in literature and other media that explore these realities, negotiate the fuzzy edges of ‘ethnic’ or ‘national’ cultures, and participate in the creation of transnational public spheres as well as transcultural imaginations and memories; and, finally, pedagogy and didactics, where earlier models of teaching ‘other’ cultures are faced with the challenge of coming to terms with cultural complexity both in what is being taught and in the people it is taught to, and where ‘target cultures’ have become elusive. The idea of ‘locating’ culture and literature exclusively in the context of ethnicities or nations is rapidly losing plausibility throughout an ‘English-speaking world’ that has long since been multi- rather than monolingual. Exploring the prospects and contours of ‘Transcultural English Studies’ thus reflects a set of common challenges and predicaments that in recent years have increasingly moved centre stage not only in the New Literatures in English, but also in British and American studies.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

On the Acquisition and Possession of Commonalities / Wolfgang Welsch

Multiple Modernities: — The Transnationalization of Cultures / Gisela Welz

Authenticity: — Why We Still Need It Although It Doesn’t Exist / Virginia Richter

Shifting Perspectives: — The Transcultural Novel / Sissy Helff

The Dangers of Diaspora: — Some Thoughts About the Black Atlantic / Ruth Mayer

The Times of India: — Transcultural Temporalities in Theory and Fiction / Dirk Wiemann

Lakshman’s Journal: — An Essay in Narratology and the Barbs of Transculturality / Peter Stummer

Broken Borders: — Migration, Modernity and English Writing – Transcultural Transformation in the Heart of Europe / Mike Phillips

From the Belly of the Fish: — Jewish Writers in English in Israel: Transcultural Perspectives / Axel Stähler

Linguistic Dimensions of Jewish-American Literature / Pascal Fischer

Eluding Containment: — Orality and the Ordnance Survey Memoir in Ireland / Edith Shillue

Atanarjuat – Fast Running and Electronic Storytelling in the Arctic / Kerstin Knopf

Manifestation of Self and/or Tribal Identity?: — Māori Writing in the Global Maelstrom / Michaela Moura–Koçoğlu

Transcultural Perspectives in Caribbean Poetry / Sabrina Brancato

The Location of Transculture / Mark Stein

“Final Passages”?: — Representations of Black British History in Caryl Phillips’s Novel and Its Television Adaptation / Eva Ulrike Pirker

Trying to Escape, Longing to Belong: — Roots, Genes and Performativity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist / Barbara Schaff

Fictions of Transcultural Memory: — Zulfikar Ghose’s The Triple Mirror of the Self as an Imaginative Reconstruction of the Self in Multiple Worlds / Nadia Butt

Routes to the Roots: — Transcultural Ramifications in Bombay Talkie / Christine Vogt–William

Beyond the Contact Zone?: — Mapping Transcultural Spaces in Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen and Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach / Katja Sarkowsky

The Long Shadow of Tacitus: — Classical and Modern Colonial Discourses in the Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century Scottish Highlands / Silke Stroh

Inter- and/or Transcultural Learning in the Foreign Language Classroom?: — Theoretical Foundations and Practical Implications / Sabine Doff

Towards a Cosmopolitan Readership: — New Literatures in English in the Classroom / Michael C. Prusse

Teaching Hanif Kureishi / Laurenz Volkmann

A New Dialogue at the Periphery?: — Teaching Postcolonial African, Black American, and Indian Writings in India / Kanaka Bashyam Sankaran

Look, See, and Say: — Photographs of Africa in a Cultural Perspective / Detlev Gohrbandt and Gisela Feurle

I: Transcultural Communication, Poetics and Viewer Response in Photography / Detlev Gohrbandt

II: Teaching and Learning with Photographs of Africa / Gisela Feurle

Notes on Contributors.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-282-59461-3

9786612594618

90-420-2884-X

1-4416-1334-X

OCLC:

659500219

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789042028845 DOI