New Directions in Diaspora Studies

Cultural and Literary Approaches

Edited by Sarah Ilott; Ana Cristina Mendes and Lucinda Newns

This collection brings together new critical approaches to diaspora studies, branching out to areas such as literary studies, visual culture, and museum studies, and explores them in relation to a variety of fictional works, cultural traditions, theoretical paradigms, and geo-political contexts. The innovation of this volume lies in the interplay of both texts and theoretical insights from these different areas of cultural analysis, drawn together to probe diverse manifestations of diaspora while pointing out new directions of critique. Moving between representations of real and imaginary, violent and utopian, past, present and future diasporas, contributors demonstrate the ways in which authors, performers and artists are establishing new modes of representing and imagining diaspora in an increasingly globalised age. Contributions are organised into sections on performance, speculative fiction, city spaces, affective or violent diasporas, and silence and voice. Bringing together these wide-ranging histories, contexts and media allows for dialogue across vastly divergent experiences and representations of diaspora, and opens up a theoretical debate on the changing nature of this field of study.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International

Pages: 198 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-78660-516-0 • Hardback • July 2018 • $153.00 • (£119.00)

978-1-78661-595-4 • Paperback • December 2019 • $53.00 • (£41.00)

978-1-78660-517-7 • eBook • July 2018 • $41.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Media Studies, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postmodernism, Social Science / Culture

New Directions in Diaspora Studies

Cultural and Literary Approaches

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This collection brings together new critical approaches to diaspora studies, branching out to areas such as literary studies, visual culture, and museum studies, and explores them in relation to a variety of fictional works, cultural traditions, theoretical paradigms, and geo-political contexts. The innovation of this volume lies in the interplay of both texts and theoretical insights from these different areas of cultural analysis, drawn together to probe diverse manifestations of diaspora while pointing out new directions of critique. Moving between representations of real and imaginary, violent and utopian, past, present and future diasporas, contributors demonstrate the ways in which authors, performers and artists are establishing new modes of representing and imagining diaspora in an increasingly globalised age. Contributions are organised into sections on performance, speculative fiction, city spaces, affective or violent diasporas, and silence and voice. Bringing together these wide-ranging histories, contexts and media allows for dialogue across vastly divergent experiences and representations of diaspora, and opens up a theoretical debate on the changing nature of this field of study.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International

Pages: 198 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-78660-516-0 • Hardback • July 2018 • $153.00 • (£119.00)

978-1-78661-595-4 • Paperback • December 2019 • $53.00 • (£41.00)

978-1-78660-517-7 • eBook • July 2018 • $41.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Media Studies, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Postmodernism, Social Science / Culture

Author

Sarah Ilott is a Lecturer in English and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Ana Cristina Mendes is an Assistant Professor in English Studies at the University of Lisbon.

Lucinda Newns is a Lecturer in Postcolonial and World Literatures at Queen Mary University of London.

Table of Contents

Preface, John McLeod / Introduction, Sarah Ilott, Ana Cristina Mendes & Lucinda Newns / Part I: Performing Diaspora / 1. Performing Street Art: CityLeaks, Affiliation, and Transcultural Diaspora, Cathy Covell Waegner / 2. The Pitfalls and Potentials of Transcultural Performance in Diasporic Contexts: Spectating Otherness at Home and Abroad, Miki Flockemann / Part II: Speculative Diasporas / 3. Speculative Migrations: Hari Kunzru’s Historical Consciousness, the Rhetoric of Interplanetary Colonization, and the Locus-Colonial Novel, Rachel Rochester / 4. Mythology of the Space Frontier: Diaspora, Liminality, and the Practices of Remembrance in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, Agnieszka Podruczna / Part III: Diaspora City Spaces / 5. Diasporic Ways of Knowing: Teju Cole’s Open City, Christiane Steckenbiller / 6. Affecting the City: Flânerie in Doris Lessing’s Writings, Ágnes Györke / Part IV: Affective and Violent Diasporas / 7. Everyday Emotions and Migration: Using Affect to Understand Contemporary Diasporic Fiction, Sibyl Adam / 8. Forms of Diaspora and British New Slaveries in Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand and Caryl Phillips’s In the Falling Snow, Pietro Deandrea / Part V: Challenging Dominant Narratives of Diaspora: Silence and Voice / 9. Gendered Silence in Transnational Narratives, Karen D’Souza / 10. Reading Between Languages: Polyphony in M G Vassanji’s Writing, Asma Sayed

Reviews

Ilott, Mendes, and Newns’s edited volume will prove to be highly useful for researchers and students of both diaspora studies and postcolonial literature and arts and merits a high recommendation as an addition to library collections of diaspora as well as literary and cultural studies.

— Hungarian Journal Of English and American Studies

Unquestionably, New Directions in Diaspora Studies offers a powerful intervention to Diaspora Studies and to Postcolonial Studies. Not only does the book highlight major new concerns of diaspora studies; it also delineates new links with other areas such as postcolonial criticism and eco-criticism. The original contribution of this book of criticism is its ability to update diaspora studies and align it with ongoing, timely geopolitical debates. The cluster of new research trajectories presented in this book would lead to the emergence of novel research questions beyond the homeland and expatriation land dichotomy. The authors cover a substantial range of diasporic cultural expressions which is why the book is of significant merit for its rich contribution to diaspora studies.
— Postcolonial Studies

New Directions in Diaspora Studies is a brilliant collection that challenges readers to consider new contexts, contestations, formations, and representations of diaspora. In this current moment of rising securitization, white nationalism, and dangerous migrations, this volume offers a timely, critical, and much-needed intervention, paving the way for new discussions and debates.
— Amrita Hari, Assistant Professor, Pauline Jewett Institute for Women's and Gender Studies at Carleton University

New Directions in Diaspora Studies is a major contribution to the field. Contributors from diverse geographic affiliations take an important new step in reassessing the usefulness of diaspora as a theoretical framework. Because of the comparative approach, it will become an important reference for students and scholars.
— Chia Youyee Vang, Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Unquestionably, New Directions in Diaspora Studies offers a powerful intervention to Diaspora Studies and to Postcolonial Studies. Not only does the book highlight major new concerns of diaspora studies; it also delineates new links with other areas such as postcolonial criticism and eco-criticism. The authors cover a substantial range of diasporic cultural expressions which is why the book is of significant merit for its rich contribution to diaspora studies.

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