The editors (affiliated with the department of English language and literature, National U. of Singapore present 29 selected papers from the 9th Biennial Symposium on the Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region. The theme of the symposium was "complicity" in the age of globalization, carrying both negative and positive connotations of "compromises" and "resistances" in literature and culture. Examining Asian-Pacific literatures in English, the papers engage the concept of complicitousness in a range of dimensions. The papers are grouped into sections that are broadly categorized in terms of Asia-Pacific relations; the politics of identity; and language, gender, and empowerment. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
9/11: Official Complicity is written to call attention to the inconsistencies of the American government's response to 9/11, blending a mix of fact and fiction in the story of one man's journey into the heart of the controversy over the attacks in America on Sept. 11, 2001. When 58 year old Alex Monroe visits the site of his wife's death, on the anniversary of the terrorist bombing of a London subway on July 7th 2005, he is drawn immediately to a few American tourists who also lost those close to them during 9/11. He promises to visit Ground Zero and pay his respects. What Alex doesn't know is that he will become entangled in a mess of lies, government conspiracy and in possession of incriminating documents that could prove the United States government's involvement in 9/11, all the while being chased by one determined government secret agent; Nash. The author peppers the novel with citations from reputable newspapers and media outlets, giving the reader a survey of how there were indications of the attacks well before the events actually occurred. A work of thrilling fiction, 9/11: Official Complicity poses a hypothetical world of government involvement in terrorist action that seems frighteningly possible. Was there a 'cover-up' by the United States Government . . . ? . . . You can be the judge of that. http://filmandscriptsproductionsltd.webs.com/apps/videos/?sort_type=1
In Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific, Susan Y. Najita proposes that the traumatic history of contact and colonization has become a crucial means by which indigenous peoples of Oceania are reclaiming their cultures, languages, ways of knowing, and political independence. In particular, she examines how contemporary writers from Hawai‘i, Samoa, and Aotearoa/New Zealand remember, re-tell, and deploy this violent history in their work. As Pacific peoples negotiate their paths towards sovereignty and chart their postcolonial futures, these writers play an invaluable role in invoking and commenting upon the various uses of the histories of colonial resistance, allowing themselves and their readers to imagine new futures by exorcising the past. Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific is a valuable addition to the fields of Pacific and Postcolonial Studies and also contributes to struggles for cultural decolonization in Oceania: contemporary writers’ critical engagement with colonialism and indigenous culture, Najita argues, provides a powerful tool for navigating a decolonized future.
This book addresses issues of space, historicity, architecture and textuality by focusing on Singapore's singular position in the region and as a global city. The articles consider how various experiences of Singapore, both from within and from outside, help to complicate existing assumptions about global urbanism, postcolonialism, and architectural theory while producing challenging new ideas from a variety of disciplines concerned with how space, historicity, architecture and textuality inform one another.
The world is anything but unfamiliar with diaspora: Jewish, African, Armenian, Roma-Gipsy, Filipino/a, Tamil, Irish or Italian, even Japanese. But few have carried so global a resonance as that of China. What, then, of literary-cultural expression, the huge body of fiction which has addressed itself to that plurality of lives and geographies and which has come to be known as “After China”? This collection of essays offers bearings on those written in English, and in which both memory and story are central, spanning the USA to Australia, Canada to the UK, Hong Kong to Singapore, with yet others of more transnational nature. This collection opens with a reprise of woman-authored Chinese American fiction using Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan as departure points. In turn follow readings of the oeuvres of Tan and Frank Chin. A comparative essay takes up novels by Canadian, American and Australian authors from the perspective of migrancy as fracture. Chinese Canada comes into view in accounts of SKY Lee, Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai. Australia under Chinese literary auspices is given a comparative mapping through the fiction of Brian Castro and Ouyang Yu. The English language “China fiction” of Singapore and Hong Kong is located in essays centred, respectively, on Martin Booth and Po Wah Lam, and Hwee Hwee Tan and Colin Cheong. The collection rounds out with portraits of Timothy Mo as British transnational author, a selection of contextual Chinese British stories and art, and the phenomenon of “Chinese Chick Lit” novels. China Fictions/English Language will be of interest to readers drawn both to “After China” as diasporic literary heritage and comparative literature in general.
The world is anything but unfamiliar with diaspora: Jewish, African, Armenian, Roma-Gipsy, Filipino/a, Tamil, Irish or Italian, even Japanese. But few have carried so global a resonance as that of China. What, then, of literary-cultural expression, the huge body of fiction which has addressed itself to that plurality of lives and geographies and which has come to be known as “After China”? This collection of essays offers bearings on those written in English, and in which both memory and story are central, spanning the USA to Australia, Canada to the UK, Hong Kong to Singapore, with yet others of more transnational nature.This collection opens with a reprise of woman-authored Chinese American fiction using Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan as departure points. In turn follow readings of the oeuvres of Tan and Frank Chin. A comparative essay takes up novels by Canadian, American and Australian authors from the perspective of migrancy as fracture. Chinese Canada comes into view in accounts of SKY Lee, Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai. Australia under Chinese literary auspices is given a comparative mapping through the fiction of Brian Castro and Ouyang Yu. The English language “China fiction” of Singapore and Hong Kong is located in essays centred, respectively, on Martin Booth and Po Wah Lam, and Hwee Hwee Tan and Colin Cheong. The collection rounds out with portraits of Timothy Mo as British transnational author, a selection of contextual Chinese British stories and art, and the phenomenon of “Chinese Chick Lit” novels. China Fictions/English Language will be of interest to readers drawn both to “After China” as diasporic literary heritage and comparative literature in general.
The notion of the postcolonial metropolis has gained prominence in the last two decades both within and beyond postcolonial studies. Disciplines such as sociology and urban studies, however, have tended to focus on the economic inequalities, class disparities, and other structural and formative aspects of the postcolonial metropolises that are specific to Western conceptions of the city at large. It is only recently that the depiction of postcolonial metropolises has been addressed in the writings of Suketu Mehta, Chris Abani, Amit Chaudhuri, Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga, Helon Habila, Sefi Atta, and Zakes Mda, among others. Most of these works probe the urban specifics and physical and cultural topographies of postcolonial cities while highlighting their agential capacity to defy, appropriate, and abrogate the superimposition of theories of Western modernity and urbanism. These ASNEL Papers are all concerned with the idea of the postcolonial (in the) metropolis from various disciplinary viewpoints, as drawn from a great range of cityscapes (spread out over five continents). The essays explore, on the one hand, ideas of spatial subdivision and inequality, political repression, social discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation, and, on the other, the possibility of transforming, reinventing and reconfigurating the ‘postcolonial condition’ in and through literary texts and visual narratives. In this context, the volume covers a broad spectrum of theoretical and thematic approaches to postcolonial and metropolitan topographies and their depictions in writings from Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, South Asia, and greater Asia, as well as the UK, addressing issues such as modernity and market economies but also caste, class, and social and linguistic aspects. At the same time, they reflect on the postcolonial metropolis and postcolonialism in the metropolis by concentrating on an urban imaginary which turns on notions of spatial subdivision and inequality, political repression, social discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation – as the continuing ‘postcolonial’ condition.
This collection of essays on the Singaporean writer and artist Arthur Yap is dedicated to his multifaceted creative work and makes it accessible to both general and academic readers. It features new and innovative essays on Yap's prose, poetry and paintings by an international group of scholars and critics. The essays approach Yap's work through literary and analytical methods drawn from postcolonial criticism, ecocriticism, studies of urban spaces, visual art and sexuality, with particular consideration for how his work contributes to a specifically Singaporean form of postcolonial critique.
The first reference work to provide an integrated and authoritative body of information about the political, cultural and economic contexts of postcolonial literatures that have their provenance in the major European Empires of Belgium, Denmark, France, G
The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis covers the major approaches to Discourse Analysis from Critical Discourse Analysis to Multimodal Discourse Analysis and their applications in key educational and institutional settings. The handbook is divided into six sections: Approaches to Discourse Analysis, Register and Genre, Developments in Spoken Discourse, Educational Applications, Institutional Applications and Identity, Culture and Discourse. The chapters are written by a wide range of contributors from around the world, each a leading researcher in their respective field. All chapters have been closely edited by James Paul Gee and Michael Handford. With a focus on the application of Discourse Analysis to real-life problems, the contributors introduce the reader to a topic, and analyse authentic data. The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis is vital reading for linguistics students as well as students of communication and cultural studies, social psychology and anthropology.
