Transcultural Identities In Contemporary Literature

In recent decades, globalization has led to increased mobility and interconnectedness. For a growing number of people, contemporary life entails new local and transnational interdependencies which transform individual and collective allegiances. Contemporary literature often reflects these changes through its exploration of migrant experiences and transcultural identities. Calling into question traditional definitions of culture, many recent works of poetry and prose fiction go beyond the spatial boundaries of a given state, emphasizing instead the mixing and collision of languages, cultures, and identities. In doing so, they also challenge recent and contemporary discourses about cultural identities, fostering a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of identity-formation processes in diverse transcultural frameworks. This volume analyses how traditional understandings of culture, as well as literary representations of identity constructs, can be reconceptualized from a transcultural perspective. In four thematic sections focusing on migration, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and literary translingualism, the twelve essays included in this volume explore various facets of transculturality in contemporary poetry and fiction from around the world. Contributors: Malin Lidström Brock, Katherina Dodou, Pilar Cuder–Domínguez, Stefan Helgesson, Christoph Houswitschka, Carly McLaughlin, Kristin Rebien, J.B. Rollins, Karen L. Ryan, Eric Sellin, Mats Tegmark, Carmen Zamorano Llena. Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Professor of English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden. She is founder and director of DUCIS (Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies) and leads Dalarna University’s Transcultural Identities research group. Julie Hansen is Research Fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies and teaches Russian literature in the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University, Sweden. Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden, and member of Dalarna University’s Transcultural Identities research group.

Mobility has become one of the most exciting factors shaping our transnational and transcultural world today. However, the variety of approaches and stimulating debates it has engendered in geopolitics and sociology make it challenging for literary and cultural critics to establish solid approaches and own vocabularies. Through a variety of case studies written by international contributors, this volume addresses emerging topics by using the tools of border studies, postcolonial discourse, and globalization theory. The multiple perspectives provided here emphasize the interaction between migrants and hosts as material, discursive, and historical. The chapters in this volume view identities as mobile and in constant flux, constructed and reconstructed repeatedly in historical and cultural encounters with several others. As a result of this dynamic, established stereotypes and images are challenged and revised in the analyses here. The book concludes that cultural identities are increasingly visible as results of large-scale global mobility. In so doing, it challenges views that address ethnicity as an unambiguous category and reveals that the making of such identities is contradictory and even conflicting.

Transcultural Insights into Contemporary Irish Literature and Society examines the transcultural patterns that have been enriching Irish literature since the twentieth century and engages with the ongoing dialogue between contemporary Irish literature and society. Driven by the growing interest in transcultural studies in the humanities, this volume provides an insightful analysis of how Irish literature handles the delicate balance between authenticity and folklore, and uniformisation and diversity in an increasingly globalised world. Following a diachronic approach, the volume includes critical readings of canonical Irish literature as an uncharted exchange of intercultural dialogues. The text also explores the external and internal transcultural traits present in recent Irish literature, and its engagement with social injustice and activism, and discusses location and mobility as vehicles for cultural transfer and the advancement of the women’s movement. A final section also includes an examination of literary expressions of hybridisation, diversity and assimilation to scrutinise negotiations of new transcultural identities. In the light of the compiled contributions, the volume ends with a revisitation of Irish studies in a world in which national identity has become increasingly problematic. This volume presents new insights into the fictional engagement of contemporary Irish literature with political, social and economic issues, and its efforts to accommodate the local and the global, resulting in a reshaping of national collective imaginaries.

This book adopts an integrated approach to the study of contact literature through collaboration between theories of World Englishes and translation studies. The author proposes an interactive framework that integrates linguistic and cultural perspectives, through the analysis of selected Anglo-Arab and Arab-American contact literary texts: Samia Serageldine’s The Cairo House (2000), Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage (1999), Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999), Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love (2000), and Abdelkebir Khatibi’s Love in Two Languages (1990). The author then discusses the pedagogical implications of bilingual creativity via a language in literature approach. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of translation studies, literature and cultural studies.

This 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, displacement, and uncertain identity, suggesting new forms of subjectification. Multiple representations of the migrant subject inform and perform the possibility of new post- national and transcultural individual and group identities and actively contribute to rewriting and decolonizing history.

This volume looks at the implications of transcultural humanities in South Asia, which is becoming a crucial area of research within literary and cultural studies. The volume also explores various complex critical dimensions of transculturation, its indeterminate periodisation, its temporal and spatial nonlinearity, its territoriality and intersectionality. Drawing on contributors from around the globe, the entries look at literature and poetics, theory and praxis, borders and nations, politics, Partition, gender and sexuality, the environment, representations in art and pedagogy and the transcultural classroom. Using key examples and case studies, the contributors look at current developments in transcultural and transnational standpoints and their possible educational outcomes. A broad and comprehensive collection, as it also speaks about the value of the humanities and the significance of South Asian contexts, Transcultural Humanities in South Asia will be of particular interest to those working on postcolonial studies, literary studies, Asian studies and more.

Cultural Identity In Transition Analyses The Challenges That Globalisation And Modernisation Have Brought To Cultural Identity In Recent Years. This Collection Of Articles Highlights Some Of The Central Theoretical Ideas And Models Currently Used In The Analysis Of Cultural Identity In The Social And Cultural Sciences.While The Book S Main Regional Focus Is On Northern Europe, This Is Complemented By Several Case Studies Addressing Issues Of Cultural Identity In Indigenous And Ethnic Communities, In Literary And Artistic Expression, And In Terms Of National Politics Around The World.The Book Discusses In Detail The Questions Like : What Is At Stake In The Global Culture Industry In Terms Of Cultural Identity? How Do The Internet And Information Technology In General Empower Local Communities? What Kinds Of Political Struggles And Conflicts Can Be Associated With The Processes Of Cultural Identity? Cultural Identities Are In Transition, But In What Direction Are They Moving?Cultural Identity In Transition Will Be Essential Reading For University Students And Researchers In Sociology, Anthropology, And Cultural And Literary Studies.

In this era of increasing global mobility, identities are too complex to be captured by concepts that rely on national borders for reference. Such identities are not unified or stable, but are fluid entities which constantly push at the boundaries of the nation-state, thereby re-defining themselves and the nation-state simultaneously. Contemporary literature pays specific attention to internal and external notions of belonging ("Politics of Motion") and definitions of self resulting from interpersonal relationships ("Politics of Longing"). This collection looks at texts by authors who are British, American, or Canadian, but for whom a self-definition according national parameters is insufficient.