Postcolonial Moves

Much theoretical and historical work engaged with the question of the "postcolonial" is built upon an imagined, unified premodern "Middle Ages" in Europe. One of the results of this has been that in recent years scholars in medieval and early modern studies have been critically assessing the uses of postcolonial and subaltern theoretical perspectives in their fields, and considering what their periods have to say to postcolonial theorists. This book offers a series of original essays that explore with specificity the methodological, textual, cultural, and historiographic moves required for postcolonial engagements with premodern times.

Imagining London examines representations of the English metropolis in Canadian, West Indian, South Asian, and second-generation 'black British' novels written in the last half of the twentieth century.

This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, performance studies) have emerged. This has brought fresh vigour and impetus to medieval studies, and impacted significantly on cognate periods and areas. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English brings together the insights of these new fields and approaches with those of more familiar texts and methods of study, to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of medieval literature today. It also returns to first principles in posing fundamental questions about the nature, scope, and significance of the discipline, and the directions that it might take in the next decade. The Handbook contains 44 newly commissioned essays from both world-leading scholars and exciting new scholarly voices. Topics covered range from the canonical genres of Saints' lives, sermons, romance, lyric poetry, and heroic poetry; major themes including monstrosity and marginality, patronage and literary politics, manuscript studies and vernacularity are investigated; and there are close readings of key texts, such as Beowulf, Wulf and Eadwacer, and Ancrene Wisse and key authors from Ælfric to Geoffrey Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet.

Feminist Film Studies is a readable, yet comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in feminist film theory and criticism. Karen Hollinger provides an accessible overview of women’s representation and involvement in film, complemented by analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. Key areas include: a brief history of the development of feminist film theory the theorization of the male gaze and the female spectator women in genre films and literary adaptations the female biopic feminism and avant-garde and documentary film women as auteurs lesbian representation women in Third Cinema. Each chapter includes a "Films in Focus" section, which analyzes key texts related to the chapter’s major topic, including examples from classical Hollywood, world cinema, and the contemporary period. This book provides students in both film and gender/women’s studies with a clear introduction to the field of feminist film theory and criticism.

Glissant has written extensively in French about the colonial experience in the Caribbean. Britton (French, Aberdeen U., Scotland) situates Glissant within ongoing debates in postcolonial theory, making connections between his novels and theoretical work and the work of Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhanha, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Focusing on language and subjectivity, discussion moves between analysis of Glissant's theoretical work and detailed readings of his novels. Major themes central to his writing, such as the reappropriation of history, standard and vernacular language, and the colonial construction of the Other, are addressed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Postcolonialism is a book that examines the influence of postcolonial theory in critical geographical thought and scholarship. Aimed at advanced-level students and researchers, the book is a lively, stimulating and relevant introduction to ‘postcolonial geography’ that elaborates on the critical interventions in social, cultural and political life this important subfield is poised to make. The book is structured around three intersecting parts – Spaces, 'Identity'/hybridity, Knowledge – that broadly follow the trajectory of postcolonial studies since the late 1970s. It comprises ten main chapters, each of which is situated at the intersections of postcolonialism and critical human geography. In doing so, Postcolonialism develops three key arguments. First, that postcolonialism is best conceived as an intellectually creative and practical set of methodologies or approaches for critically engaging existing manifestations of power and exclusion in everyday life and in taken-as-given spaces. Second, that postcolonialism is, at its core, concerned with the politics of representation, both in terms of how people and space are represented, but also the politics surrounding who is able to represent themselves and on what/whose terms. Third, the book argues that postcolonialism itself is an inherently geographical intellectual enterprise, despite its origins in literary theory. In developing these arguments and addressing a series of relevant and international case studies and examples throughout, Postcolonialism not only demonstrates the importance of postcolonial theory to the contemporary critical geographical imagination. It also argues that geographers have much to offer to continued theorizations and workings of postcolonial theory, politics and intellectual debates going forward. This is a book that brings critical analyses of the continued and omnipresent legacies of colonialism and imperialism to the heart of human geography, but also one that returns an avowedly critical geographical disposition to the core of interdisciplinary postcolonial studies.