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"Interdisciplinary Literary Studies"
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Conversations in postcolonial thought
\"Based on original material, this book offers a series of 12 conversational interviews with a diverse set of postcolonial thinkers from across the globe in the social sciences and humanities. Using a biographical approach to map out life histories, uniquely this book not only examines the key ideas of the thinkers interviewed, but it also invites readers to share their personal journeys to help one understand the experiences that led to their work within the field. The selection of thinkers included within this text is done so not with the aim to offer an encyclopedic index, but rather, to show how postcolonial thought as a broader concern can been found across a range of disciplines\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud’s intertextuality with William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
This article argues that Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud parallels Shakespeare’s Hamlet by exploring various themes and motifs such as the ghost, the gravedigger, Ophelia’s suicide, adultery, chastity, and madness. Through these themes and motifs, Jabra weaves a narrative that simultaneously recalls and reinvents Shakespeare’s classic play in a contemporary, politically-charged context. This article shows that Jabra utilizes Hamlet as a pivotal reference to represent the main concerns of his Palestinian people from a new and distinctive literary perspective. This is explicit in Jabra’s representation of revenge, in particular. In Hamlet, Shakespeare explores the theme of a son’s revenge for his father. Jabra, on the other hand, structures In Search of Walid Masoud around the revenge of a father for his son, which makes the revenge at the heart of the novel not personal but rather collective (the father’s revenge for his motherland/Palestine). This demonstrates Jabra’s proclivity to render the national plight of Palestinian people global and permit the Palestinian struggle to be perceived on a larger scale.
Journal Article
The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities
The health humanities is a rapidly rising field, advancing an inclusive, democratizing, activist, applied, critical, and culturally diverse approach to delivering health and well-being through the arts and humanities. It has generated new kinds of interdisciplinary research, knowledge, and communities of practice globally. It has also acted to bring greater coherence and political force to contributions across a range of related disciplines and traditions.
In this volume, a formidable set of authors explore the history, current state, and future of the health humanities, in particular how its vision of the arts and humanities:
Promotes creative public health.
Opens new routes to health and well-being.
Informs and drives better health care.
Interrogates relationships between ill health and social equality.
Develops humanist theory in relation to health and social care practice.
Foregrounds cultural difference as a resource for positive change in society.
Tests the humanity of an increasingly globalized health-care system.
Looks to overcome structural and process obstacles to cross-disciplinary ventures.
Champions co-construction, co-design, and mutuality in solving health and well-being challenges.
Showcases less familiar, prominent, or celebrated creative practices.
Includes multiple perspectives on the value and health benefits of the arts and humanities not limited to or dominated by medicine.
Divided into two main sections, the Companion looks at \"Reflections and Critical Perspectives,\" offering current thinking and definitions within health humanities, and \"Applications,\" comprising a wide selection of applied arts and humanities practices from comedy, writing, and dancing to yoga, cooking, and horticultural display.
eBook
Ecological sensibility and the pursuit of progress in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow : a comparative postcolonial ecocritical analysis
Postcolonial nations often grapple with the intricate balance between development and environmental sustainability. This study adopts a postcolonial ecocritical framework to explore the nuanced relationship between these themes in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow. Through detailed textual analysis, it investigates how the novels depict the ecological consequences of colonial and neocolonial practices in postcolonial Africa. By comparing the authors’ depictions of progress and ecological awareness, the study offers fresh insights into the dilemmas and opportunities African nations face in their pursuit of sustainable development. While Mda’s novel vividly illustrates the environmental damage wrought by colonial and neocolonial forces, Ngũgĩ’s work presents diverse and conflicting perspectives on development. Both novels ultimately advocate for critical reflection on the environmental impacts of progress, encouraging readers to envision alternative futures that harmonize community welfare with environmental preservation. By analyzing the journeys of characters like Kamiti, Nyawira, Camagu, and Qukezwa—who embody ecological awareness—the study highlights the authors’ engagement with Africa’s environmental challenges, advocating for a more equitable and sustainable path forward.
Journal Article
Constructing masculinity through ulwaluko : a scoping literature review
Masculinity and ulwaluko within amaXhosa remain contentious due to two conflicting ideologies. The first one is the construction of male behaviors, attitudes, and identities, and the second one is the obstruction of acceptable cultural norms and values. Ulwaluko, a traditional initiation practice, is fraught with complexities, necessitating ongoing scholarly dialogues. Therefore, this article employs a scoping literature review to unearth how masculinity is constructed through ulwaluko within amaXhosa, an indigenous South African group. At the same time, it addresses central controversies and challenges inherent in this rite of passage, aiming to evoke critical dialogues around these issues. The findings uncover that ulwaluko has historically held socio-cultural, economic, and political significance in constructing amaXhosa male identity. Despite its enduring value in many indigenous African communities today, this cultural practice is profoundly impacted by (post)colonialism and globalisation. Ultimately, this article calls for a balanced discernment of ulwaluko, one that acknowledges its cultural heritage while addressing modern challenges to guarantee its preservation and adaptability in contemporary contexts and beyond.
Journal Article
Beyond words: translating nonverbal communication in Arabic poetry a cultural turn approach
This study addresses the challenges of translating culture-specific nonverbal communication in literature, focusing on the complexities of conveying rich kinetic-visual imagery across languages. By examining 18 English and French translations of a sample verse, the research aims to explore how translators handle kinesic and oculesic elements intrinsic to the source text. The comparative analysis reveals that while many translators struggle to convey cultural nuances, often simplifying or misinterpreting nonverbal cues, some successfully navigate these complexities. Factors such as chronology, interpretive choices, and domestication strategies significantly impact the translation process. The study’s findings underscore the importance of cultural awareness and sensitivity in achieving effective literary translations, highlighting the need for translators to act as cultural mediators rather than mere linguistic converters. This research contributes to the field by demonstrating how varying approaches to translating nonverbal cues can significantly impact the preservation of a text’s cultural essence, thereby advancing our understanding of the intricacies involved in cross-cultural literary translation and emphasizing the translator’s role in bridging cultural gaps.
Journal Article
The subaltern, the superior race and the artificial friends: Ishiguro’s postcolonial perspective in Klara and the Sun
Although set in a posthuman and predominantly metropolitan setting, Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun deeply engages in postcolonial narrative discourse and its implications. This paper examines Ishiguro’s postcolonial stance in the novel. It argues that Ishiguro, in Klara and the Sun, combines postcolonial and posthuman narratives and themes to introduce the ‘subaltern’ and the ‘superior race’ of a futuristic posthuman society. In doing so, the narrative highlights the dangers and risks of the insufficiently examined advancement of technology which has led to such a phenomenon and significantly impacted human relationships. The story ostensibly describes a futuristic posthuman society, where only ‘genetically modified’ kids are at the top. The non-lifted kids, conversely, represent the subaltern, the inferior ‘others’ who are marginalized and deprived of most social and educational rights. Notably, the ‘interaction meeting’ at Josie’s house has been intricately developed as a narrative technique to highlight the social divide and discrimination based on genetic modification. As such, at this gathering, Rick appears to be the one who does not belong there as he is not a ‘lifted’ kid like the rest of them. Thus, he is being oppressed and treated as a subaltern. Later, we learn that Rick was unable to enter the university to pursue his studies due to his social status. Thus, by combining postcolonial and posthuman narratives Ishiguro ingeniously highlights genetic modification and its social implications, and by extension unpacks the dangers of unchecked technology that might dominate and alter the hierarchical social system in the long run.
Journal Article
The symbolic construction of literary naming at the crossroads of tradition and modernity: towards new historicism in Ahmed Abodehman’s memoir The Belt
Modern Saudi Arabian literature is a dynamic reproduction of the country’s ongoing socio-political transformations and cultural struggles. As writers negotiate the complexities of identity at the crossroads of tradition and modernity in a rapidly changing society, the role of literary motifs, such as names, becomes increasingly significant. This study, anchored within a new historicist perspective, explores the function of names in Ahmed Abodehman’s memoir The Belt. It illuminates the construction of literary naming and its role in the confluence of individual identity and collective cultural discourse within Saudi Arabia’s socio-cultural change through the character of Hizam. This analysis underscores the use of names as a nuanced literary device that imbues the narrative with deep cultural and ideological resonances. The study also highlights the cultural shifts evident in modern Saudi literature that are instrumental in exploring the evolving cultural topography of the nation. It further hammers on the complexities involved in the ‘triangular’ process of literary translation that the narrative has undergone, offering a critical perspective on the intricate interplay between cultural identity, linguistic diversity, and the dynamics of representation.
Journal Article
Bioregionalism in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North : a postcolonial study
This paper focuses on Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. It combines postcolonialism and bioregionalism to provide a comprehensive analysis of the novel. This helps create a postcolonial sense of place that brings to light the changes in ecosystems during and after colonisation. It investigates the characters’ sense of place and the extent to which this leads to their having a stable identity or an unstable one. Nature plays a vital role in shaping the identity of the main characters in the novel; both are born and raised in villages yet have different attachments to their surroundings. It also explores the characters’ relationship with nature, land in particular, in a postcolonial bioregional context by analysing what is considered place-based and out-of-place behaviours. The paper analyses how colonisation has changed the bioregion of Sudan in addition to the cultural and natural crises that resulted from it. It indicates the people’s postcolonial acts of resistance to these changes.
Journal Article
Transcending heroic archetypes beyond sword and shield in Brandon Sanderson’s the stormlight archive series
Heroes in Fantasy have uplifted the mindset of men providing a layout for living a legendary life by evincing a heroic placard all their life. Often, we overlook those legendary journeys that have institutionalized a collective image of men reinforcing certain qualities later deemed manly in social roles. The proliferation of the hero icons dictates the journey of manhood must be confined to the archetypes that go along with the sword and shield without letting guard of protection, sacrifice, and honor traits. This article delves into those heroic icons that have left a universal mark in shaping male identity throughout history. Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy novel “The Stormlight Archive Series” is used to assimilate heroic archetypes. The paper limelights the characters of Dalinar Kholin, Kaladin Stormblessed, and Szeth-son-son Vallano through the lens of the social gaze administered upon men. By applying the archetypal theory, this study aims to represent collective masculinity by unveiling the complexities undertaken to receive the ‘heroic trophy’.
Journal Article