Urban Mobilities In Literature And Art Activism

Urban Mobilities in Literature and Art Activism explores the entwinement of mobility and immobility in urban spaces by focusing on their representation in literary narratives but also in visual and performing arts. Across a range of geographical contexts, this volume builds on the new mobilities paradigm developed by literary scholars, sociologists and human geographers. The different chapters employ a cohesive framework that is sensitive to the intersecting dimensions of power and discrimination that shape urban kinetic features. The contributions are divided into three sections, each of which places the focus on a different aspect of urban mobility: Itinerant Subjects, Modes of Transport and Places of Transit, and Urban Liminalities.

The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature introduces world literature readers to the transnational, multivocal writings of immigrant African authors. Covering works produced in Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the world, this book investigates three major aesthetic paradigms in African diasporic literature: the Sankofan wave (late 1960s–early 1990s); the Janusian wave (1990s–2020s); and the Offshoots of the New Arrivants (those born and growing up outside Africa). Written by well-established and emerging scholars of African and diasporic literatures from across the world, the chapters in the book cover the works of well-known and not-so-well-known Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone writers from different theoretical positionalities and critical approaches, pointing out the unique innovative artistic qualities of this major subgenre of African literature. The focus on the “diasporic consciousness” of the writers and their works sets this handbook apart from others that solely emphasize migration, which is more of a process than the community of settled African people involved in the dynamic acts of living reflected in diasporic writings. This book will appeal to researchers and students from across the fields of Literature, Diaspora Studies, African Studies, Migration Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.

Roads, Mobility, and Violence in Indigenous Literature and Art from North America explores mobility, spatialized violence, and geographies of activism in a diverse archive of literary and visual art by Indigenous authors and artists. Building on Raymond Williams’s observation that "traffic is not only a technique; it is a form of consciousness and a form of social relations," this book pulls into focus racial, sexual, and environmental violence localized around roads. Reading this archive of texts next to lived struggles over spatial justice, Rymhs argues that roads are spaces of complex signification. For many Indigenous communities, the road has not often been so open. Recent Indigenous writing and visual art explores this tension between mobility and confinement. Drawing primarily on the work of Marie Clements, Tomson Highway, Marilyn Dumont, Leanne Simpson, Richard Van Camp, Kent Monkman, and Louise Erdrich, this volume examines histories of uprooting and violence associated with roads. Along with exploring these fraught histories of mobility, this book emphasizes various ways in which Indigenous communities have transformed roads into sites of political resistance and social memory.

Banksy is known worldwide for his politically subversive works of art, but he is far from the only artist whose creations are infused with internationally relevant, activist themes. How else can the arts help activate citizen participation in social justice movements? Moreover, what is the role of culture in a globalizing world? Transnationalism, Activism, Art goes beyond Banksy by investigating how the three complementary political, social, and cultural phenomena listed in the title interact in the twenty-first century. Renowned and emerging critics use current theory on cultural production and politics to illuminate case studies of various media, including film, literature, visual art, and performance, in their multiple manifestations, from electronic dance music to Wikileaks to bestselling poetry collections. By addressing how these artistic media are used to enact citizen participation in social justice movements, the volume makes important connections between such participation and scholarly study of globalization and transnationalism.

Mobility, Space, and Resistance: Transformative Spatiality in Literary and Political Discourse draws from various disciplines—such as geography, sociology, political science, gender studies, and poststructuralist thought—to posit the productive capabilities of literature in political action and at the same time show how literary art can resist the imposition and domination of oppressive systems of our spatial lives. The various approaches, topics, and types of literature discussed in this volume display a concern for social issues that can be addressed in and through literature. The essays address social injustice, oppression, discrimination, and their spatial representations. While offering interpretations of literature, this collection seeks to show how literary spaces contribute to understanding, changing, or challenging physical spaces of our lived world.

Urban Homelands explores writing by Native Oklahomans that connects urban homelands in Oklahoma and beyond and reveals the need for a new methodology of urban Indian studies.

This monograph explores the concept of mobility in Zimbabwean works of fiction published in English between the introduction of the controversial Fast Track Land Reform Programme and the end of the Mugabe era. Since 2000, Zimbabwe has experienced unprecedented levels of transnational out-migration in response to the political conflicts and economic downturn often referred to as the Zimbabwe Crisis. This, in turn, has led to an increased outpouring of literary texts about migration, both in locally produced texts and in works by authors based in the diaspora. Situating Zimbabwe’s recent literary developments in a wider context of Southern African writing and history, this book focuses on texts that portray movement within Zimbabwe’s cities, between village and city, to South Africa, and overseas. The author examines important developments and trends in recent Zimbabwean literature, investigating the link between state authoritarianism and control of mobility, and literature’s potential to intervene into dominant political discourses. The book includes in-depth analyses of ten recent works of fiction published in the post-2000 era and develops mobility as a key category of literary analysis of Zimbabwe’s contemporary literatures. Setting out a rich dialogue between literary criticism and mobility studies, this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature, Southern Africa, migration, and mobility.