Singapore Literature And Culture

Since the nation-state sprang into being in 1965, Singapore literature in English has blossomed energetically, and yet there have been few books focusing on contextualizing and analyzing Singapore literature despite the increasing international attention garnered by Singaporean writers. This volume brings Anglophone Singapore literature to a wider global audience for the first time, embedding it more closely within literary developments worldwide. Drawing upon postcolonial studies, Singapore studies, and critical discussions in transnationalism and globalization, essays unearth and introduce neglected writers, cast new light on established writers, and examine texts in relation to their specific Singaporean local-historical contexts while also engaging with contemporary issues in Singapore society. Singaporean writers are producing work informed by debates and trends in queer studies, feminism, multiculturalism and social justice -- work which urgently calls for scholarly engagement. This groundbreaking collection of essays aims to set new directions for further scholarship in this exciting and various body of writing from a place that, despite being just a small 'red dot' on the global map, has much to say to scholars and students worldwide interested in issues of nationalism, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, immigration, urban space, as well as literary form and content. This book brings Singapore literature and literary criticism into greater global legibility and charts pathways for future developments.

Since the nation-state sprang into being in 1965, Singapore literature in English has blossomed energetically, and yet there have been few books focusing on contextualizing and analyzing Singapore literature despite the increasing international attention garnered by Singaporean writers. This volume brings Anglophone Singapore literature to a wider global audience for the first time, embedding it more closely within literary developments worldwide. Drawing upon postcolonial studies, Singapore studies, and critical discussions in transnationalism and globalization, essays unearth and introduce neglected writers, cast new light on established writers, and examine texts in relation to their specific Singaporean local-historical contexts while also engaging with contemporary issues in Singapore society. Singaporean writers are producing work informed by debates and trends in queer studies, feminism, multiculturalism and social justice -- work which urgently calls for scholarly engagement. This groundbreaking collection of essays aims to set new directions for further scholarship in this exciting and various body of writing from a place that, despite being just a small ‘red dot’ on the global map, has much to say to scholars and students worldwide interested in issues of nationalism, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, immigration, urban space, as well as literary form and content. This book brings Singapore literature and literary criticism into greater global legibility and charts pathways for future developments.

This book looks at culturally significant, English-language texts produced in Singapore in the last 20 years by writers such as Balli Kaur Jaswal, Alfian Sa’at, Claire Tham, Amanda Lee Koe, Ng Yi-Sheng and Kevin Kwan. It provides an analysis sensitive to the writers' socio-political and cultural contexts, and shows how Singapore's Anglophone literature successfully disrupts the government’s narrative on transforming the island into a global city. By asking difficult questions, challenging hegemonic perspectives and exploring alternatives, the writers interrogate the country’s colonial history, its post-colonial Cold War development, and the normalization of totalizing narratives. Their texts also grapple with key aspects of contemporary Singapore society: its official multiracialism, forms of inequality, distribution of privilege, and gender and sexual politics. By connecting these texts to developments in postcolonial literary criticism, cosmopolitanism and globalization studies, thisbook sheds light on the ideological and cultural forces at work in Singapore society today.

A comprehensive historical anthology of English-language literary works from Singapore. It attempts to place the texts that have imagined the territory and the people who are now recognizably Singaporean in a historical narrative, to be read, studied, critiqued and treasured.

Shakespeare in Singapore provides the first detailed and sustained study of the role of Shakespeare in Singaporean theatre, education, and culture. This book tracks the role and development of Shakespeare in education from the founding of modern Singapore to the present day, drawing on sources such as government and school records, the entire span of Singapore's newspaper archives, playbills, interviews with educators and theatre professionals, and existing academic sources. By uniting the critical interest in Singaporean theatre with the substantial body of scholarship that concerns global Shakespeare, the author overs a broad, yet in-depth, exploration of the ways in which Singaporean approaches to Shakespeare have been shaped by, and respond to, cultural work going on elsewhere in Asia. A vital read for all students and scholars of Shakespeare, Shakespeare in Singapore offers a unique examination of the cultural impact of Shakespeare, beyond its usual footing in the Western world.

Singapore Comparative Literature Compendium presents an array of essential readings from the local canon. A compelling argument for the comparative study of Singapore's multilingual literature, the compendium aims to encourage inter-ethnic, inter-lingual, and inter-cultural transfer through the study of cultural expression across language and cultural divides within Singapore's literary scene. Apart from education and language policy, the compendium features the following seven sections: politics and history; gender, sexuality, and patriarchy; growing up, ageing, mortality; new migrants; multiculturalism and minority concerns; travel, regionalism, and global SG; and lastly, genre, experimental and speculative fiction. In turn, this compendium aims to alter entrenched orientations and encourage movement beyond the ascriptive parameters that organise cultural discussion in Singapore About the Editors: Sim Wai Chew is an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University. His academic specialisations include comparative literature, postcolonial literature and theory, and translingual literature and theory. His works include Kazuo Ishiguro (published by Routledge in 2010), British-Asian Fiction (published by Mellen in 2007) and Island Voices: A Collection of Short Stories from Singapore (published by Learners in 2007). He also recently published an English translation of Chia Joo Ming's sinophone novel Exile or Pursuit (published in 2019 by Balestier Press). His research has appeared in the journals Textual Practice, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, CLCWeb Comparative Literature and Culture, and Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities. Yow Cheun Hoe is an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, where he is the head of the Chinese programme, Director of the Chinese Heritage Centre, and Director of the Centre for Chinese Language and Culture. He is a chief editor for Huaren Yanjiu Guoji Xuebao (International Journal of Diasporic Chinese Studies) and book review editor for Journal of Chinese Overseas. His academic specialisations include Chinese migration and diaspora, qiaoxiang (Overseas Chinese homeland) ties, and diasporic Chinese literature. His books include Xinjiapo yu Zhongguo xin yimin (New Chinese Migrants in Singapore: A Question of Citizenship) (published by the City University of Hong Kong Press in 2021); Yimin guiji he lisan lunshu: Xin Ma huaren zuqun de chongceng mailuo (Migration Trajectories and Diasporic Discourses: Multiples Contexts of Ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia) (published by Shanghai Sanlian Shudian in 2014), and Guangdong and Chinese Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of Qiaoxiang (published by Routledge in 2013). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Contemporary China, Modern Asian Studies, Asian Ethnicity, Cross-Cultural Studies, Changjiang Xueshu, and Waiguo Wenxue Yanjiu.

This edited volume examines the historical development of Chinese-medium schools from the British colonial era to recent decades of divergent development after the 1965 separation of Singapore and Malaysia. Educational institutions have been a crucial state apparatus in shaping the cultural identity and ideology of ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia. This volume applies various perspectives from education theory to heritage studies in dealing with the cultural legacy and memory of such schools as situated in larger contexts of society. The book offers comprehensive practice-based analysis and reflection about the complex relationships between language acquisition, identity construction, and state formation from socio-political-cultural perspectives. It covers a broad range of aspects from identities of culture, gender, and religion, to the roles played by the state and the community in various aspects of education such as textbooks, cultural activities, and adult education, as well as the representation of culture in Chinese schools through cultural memory and literature. The readership includes academics, students and members of the public interested in the history and society of the Chinese diaspora, especially in South East Asia. This also appeals to scholars interested in a bilingual or multilingual outlook in education as well as diasporic studies.

This edition brings up to date a decade of research work developments of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, National University of Singapore, since the first volume was published in 1985. The state of the respective disciplines covered are reviewed in terms of notable theoretical and conceptual developments, major benchmarks during the past decade, and research lacunae that need to be addressed, as well as their substantive developments and contributions in the Singapore context and possible future directions, resulting in a collection of essays that places the Faculty's studies in an international comparative framework.