Transcultural Writers And Novels In The Age Of Global Mobility

In Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility, Arianna Dagnino analyzes a new type of literature emerging from artists' increased movement and cultural flows spawned by globalization. This ""transcultural"" literature is produced by authors who write across cultural and national boundaries and who transcend in their lives and creative production the borders of a single culture. Dagnino's book contains a creative rendition of interviews conducted with five internationally renowned writers--Inez Baranay, Brian Castro, Alberto Manguel, Tim Parks, and Ilija Trojanow--and a critical exegesis reflecting on thematical, critical, and stylistical aspects. By studying the selected authors' corpus of work, life experiences, and cultural orientations, Dagnino explores the implicit, often subconscious, process of cultural and imaginative metamorphosis that leads transcultural writers and their fictionalized characters beyond ethnic, national, racial, or religious loci of identity and identity formation. Drawing on the theoretical framework of comparative cultural studies, she offers insight into transcultural writing related to belonging, hybridity, cultural errancy, the ""Other,"" worldviews, translingualism, deterritorialization, neonomadism, as well as genre, thematic patterns, and narrative techniques. Dagnino also outlines the implications of transcultural writing within the wider context of world literature(s) and identifies some of the main traits that characterize "transcultural novels." "Starting from the idea that we live in an age of increasing interconnectedness, the book focuses on the biographical experiences and literary outputs of a group of culturally mobile writers it defines as transcultural. The text combines a wide-ranging and systematic theoretical approach to transcultural literature with a section in which the author recounts imaginatively the in-depth interviews she had with five authors. The work is a significant contribution to scholarship, for it increases our theoretical awareness of today's literary developments, providing us with critical tools that enable us to approach literary texts with an innovative perspective." Maurizio Ascari, Universit� di Bologna.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Transcultural Literary Studies: Politics, Theory, and Literary Analysis" that was published in Humanities

"A crime in the underbelly of deeper Johannesburg leads Zoe du Plessis, a palaeontologist of Afrikaner origin, to believe her family's secret is wrapped in an old shaman's spell. When Zoe heads for the merciless Kalahari Desert in search of early human fossils, her scientific expedition exposes instead South Africa's darker past to a scorching sun. Atonement will come through the pages of a lover's notebook still to be written."--

Introducing "narrative mobility" as a new approach in comparative studies of Iran and the US, this book reinterprets the politics and aesthetics of relations between the nations through an analysis of Iranian and American authors. The book focuses specifically on three authors—Simin Daneshvar, Shahriar Mandanipour, and Don DeLillo—who each employ narrative mobility to rethink intercultural negotiation, addressing parallel issues in America and Iran from different, but complementary, perspectives. The book analyzes the employment of parallel narrational techniques, presenting physically and virtually mobile characters who embody their respective countries as they move from one culture to another. The strange affinity between Iran and the US is ultimately revealed by viewing literary works as a "contact zone" through which the complicated relations and shared history of the two nations can be renegotiated. On a more theoretical level, the book reflects on the role of literature—in particular the novel as a transnational medium—as a bridge between nations in a period of globalization. With its focus on cross-cultural connections, the book will be of interest to anyone studying or researching comparative literature, US–Iran relations, and cultural studies generally.

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.

Since its beginning, Comparative Literature has been characterized as a discipline in crisis. But its shifting boundaries are its strength, allowing for collaboration and growth and illuminating a path forward. In Comparative Literature for the New Century a diverse group of scholars argue for a distinct North American approach to literary studies that includes the promotion of different languages. Chapters by senior scholars such as George Elliott Clarke, E.D. Blodgett, and Sneja Gunew are placed in dialogue with those by younger scholars, including Dominique Hétu, Maria Cristina Seccia, and Ndeye Fatou Ba. The writers, many of whom are multilingual, discuss problems with translation, identity and belonging, the modern epic, the role of tradition, minority writing, Francophone and Anglophone novels in Africa, and politics in literature. Engaging with theory, history, media studies, psychology, translation studies, post-colonial studies, and gender studies, chapters exemplify how the knowledge and tools offered by Comparative Literature can be applied in reading, exploring, and understanding not only literary productions but also the world at large. Presenting some of the most current work being carried out by academics and scholars actively engaged in the field in Canada and abroad, Comparative Literature for the New Century promotes the value of Comparative Literature as an interdisciplinary study and assesses future directions it might take. Contributors include George Elliott Clarke (University of Toronto), Dominique Hétu (Alberta & Montreal), Monique Tschofen (Ryerson), Jolene Armstrong (Athabasca), E.D. Blodgett (Alberta), Ndeye Fatou Ba (Ryerson), Maria Cristina Seccia (Hull), Sneja Gunew (UBC), Deborah Saidero (Udine), Elizabeth Dahab (CSULB), Gaetano Rando (Wollongong), Anna Pia De Luca (Udine), Mark A. McCutcheon (Athabasca), Giulia De Gasperi (PEI), and Joseph Pivato (Athabasca).

'Surreal, vivid, haunting, mischievous, visionary' Lauren Elkin 'Drifts is a stunning achievement. It invites us to see the world differently, as if through a kaleidoscope for the first time' Hassan Melehy 'This is wonderful - we encounter not only the Gulf War and the falling Twin Towers of Manhattan but also London, Bahrain, Texas, Dhahran, souqs, sandstorms, slantways Arabic, and cats with weeping eyes. Read on. Drift on' John Schad Natasha Burge was born and grew up in Saudi Arabia, where her family lived for more than half a century. Through various departures and returns - a year at boarding school in New England, university in London, a small town in Texas where there are more cows than people, back to work in Bahrain - the years of difficulty, isolation and severe anxiety take their toll. Finally, at 37 years old she received the life-changing news that she is autistic. In this striking exploration of identity and place, Burge probes these intertwined strands of her being: what it means to grow up at the interstices of different cultures, and what it is to experience unrecognised neurodivergence and a late diagnosis of autism. From the cosmopolitan heritage of Muharraq's Pearling Path to the jebels of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, Burge charts a new course through the stories of the Arabian Gulf and the myths surrounding autism. The result is a work of dazzling insight, sensitivity and awareness.

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.