Mapping Cultural Identities and Intersections
Mapping Cultural Identities and Intersections

Author: Mustafa Kirca

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2019-09-26

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 152754060X

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This volume investigates identity discourses and self-constructions/de-constructions in various texts through imagological readings of films, narratives, and art works, examining different layers of cultural identities, on the one hand, and measuring the literary reception of ethnic identity constitution to reveal both the self and hetero images, on the other. The book features theoretical and analytical approaches with insights borrowed from multiple disciplines, and mainly focuses on the application of imagological perspectives in the fields of literature and translation, and specifically in literary works “carried over” from one culture to another. It will be of interest for scholars and researchers working in the fields of literature, translation, cultural studies, and imagology, as well as for students studying in these fields.

The Source of the Blue Nile
The Source of the Blue Nile

Author: Gedef Abawa Firew

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-09-26

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1443867918

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Ethiopia has a rich and fascinating cultural heritage structured around water. The River Nile has been seen by many as the most important river in the world, and the secrets of the sources of the Nile and their mysteries have, from the dawn of civilization, attracted philosophers, emperors and explorers searching for answers. The source of the Blue Nile, Gish Abay, is believed to be the outlet of the biblical river Gihon, flowing directly from Paradise, linking this world with Heaven. The holiness of Abay (the Blue Nile) and its source in particular still has an important role in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In the Lake Tana region, there are also numerous other myths, traditions and rituals concerning the river. Several of the island monasteries are incredibly holy, and indigenous practices and sacrifices to the river are still conducted. The most important celebration in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the Timkat festival, which is an annual commemoration of the importance of baptism. Despite the importance of the River Nile from antiquity to present-day practices and beliefs in Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, very little research has been conducted on the cultural and religious aspects of the Blue Nile in general and its source, Gish Abay, and Lake Tana in Ethiopia in particular. This book combines historic sources and new empirical ethnography, presenting parts of this cultural heritage and the traditions of water along the Blue Nile.

Worlds Apart? A Postcolonial Reading of post-1945 East-Central European Culture
Worlds Apart? A Postcolonial Reading of post-1945 East-Central European Culture

Author: Cristina Sandru

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2013-01-16

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1443845906

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This study explores the relation of the Eastern European problematic to postcolonial critical practice, interrogating the extent to which postcolonialism can help illuminate instances of imperial domination in non-Third World contexts. It argues that colonisation is to be understood principally as a condition of ideological domination that has engendered similar forms of literary and cultural resistance; consequently, it offers a comparative framework which enables a reading in differential contexts of texts that ostensibly have little in common, but which, on close examination, reveal a shared imaginative space, rhetoric and narrative agency. The book consists of two interrelated parts. Part one is a critical discussion of the ideologies, cultural imaginaries and representational practices articulated in a diverse range of representative postcolonial and post-1945 East-Central European texts; these are shown to share, despite dissimilar conditions of production, uncannily related narrative modes and thematic emphases. Part two is a comparative literature case-study which discusses two authors whose work is both highly representative of the cultural formations discussed in the first part (Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie) and, at the same time, highly controversial. The chapters dedicated to Kundera’s and Rushdie’s work examine the cultural geography of their novels, particularly in the writers’ use of memory and story-telling to reconfigure history and personal identity in conditions of literal and metaphorical displacement. While their novels thrive on ironic subversion and ambiguity, they simultaneously gesture towards a redemptive space of the imagination, transcending the constraints of both locality and history.

The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism
The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism

Author: R. S. Sugirtharajah

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-06-27

Total Pages: 793

ISBN-13: 0190888458

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The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism is a comprehensive treatment of a relatively new form of scholarship-one of the most compelling and contested theories to emerge in recent times, and a topic that actively seeks to expand the ways in which the Bible can be studied, interpreted, and applied. Generally speaking, postcolonialism aims to critique and dismantle hegemonic worldviews and power structures, while giving voice to previously marginalized peoples and systems of thought. This approach, often varied in form, has inevitably engaged with the text and reception of the Bible, a scripture that Western colonizers introduced to-and often imposed upon-their colonial subjects. With a globally diverse list of contributors, the Handbook aims to cover the perspective and context of the authors of the Bible, as well as the modern experiences of imperialism, resistance, decolonization, and nationalism. Moreover, the volume includes both a theoretical overview and an exploration of how the field intersects with related areas, such as gender studies, race, postmodernism, and liberation theology.

Confining Spaces, Resistant Subjectivities
Confining Spaces, Resistant Subjectivities

Author: Kinana Hamam

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-08-11

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1443865532

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This book represents a significant contribution to academic knowledge, making a compelling case for a contemporary analytical re-reading of a number of “core” postcolonial women’s narratives, such as Erna Brodber’s Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, and Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter. These narratives highlight diversity, contextuality, opposition, and metachrony, have a “generative literary function”, and anticipate what have now become postcolonial feminist issues and debates. Bringing together feminist writing from a range of postcolonial contexts, the book contributes to a field represented by the critical writings of Francoise Lionnet, Ketu Katrak, and Elleke Boehmer, among others. The deconstructive, cultural approach of the book is mobilised to support an in-depth literary analysis which focuses on female oppression, difference, voice, and agency. Questions of what it means to be “a woman” and to be “postcolonial” are read as central debates which emphasise “multi-vocal and multi-focal” female narratives and perspectives. That is, they highlight the temporal, as well as cross-cultural links and implications of the selected narratives, which give the project a kind of positive complexity and linkage. Above all, the analysis of several unconventional modes and (physical/imaginative) spaces of female resistance, such as prison, widow confinement, and madness, yields some surprising results that are sustained by a close reading of the texts which are not only attentive to questions of genre, structure, imagery and narrative endings, but also oppositional, instructive and reconstructive.

Transnational Landscapes and Postmodern Poetics
Transnational Landscapes and Postmodern Poetics

Author: Asma Hichri

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-11-06

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1527505065

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This book moves beyond conventional conceptions of space and place to explore how the spatial imagination has informed our postmodern mapping of literature, culture, history, geography and politics. In this volume, scholars from different academic fields contest new territories for critical expression, venturing into a geocritical discussion of notions of identity, borders, territory, cognitive geographies, glocal cultural mobility, gendered spaces, (post)colonial cartographies, and spaces of resistance. These brilliant discussions of the postmodern dialectics of space and place invite a reappraisal of the value of space in our social, political and historical realities, thus extending the geographical imagination beyond its physical and territorial manifestations and investigating its hitherto uncharted spiritual, psychic, emotional, literary, and symbolic terrains. Bringing together theoretical and critical contributions in the fields of culture, history, politics, and literature, this engaging work invites readers to think geocritically about the significance of space and place in the postmodern age. It represents essential reading for students, critics, and scholars from various academic fields and disciplines, including history, geography, cultural studies, anthropology, political science, literature and critical theory.

International Review of Biblical Studies, Volume 51 (2004-2005)
International Review of Biblical Studies, Volume 51 (2004-2005)

Author: Bernhard Lang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2006-02-01

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13: 9047408705

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Annotation. Formerly known by its subtitle "Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft und Grenzgebiete", the International Review of Biblical Studies has served the scholarly community ever since its inception in the early 1950's. Each annual volume includes approximately 2,000 abstracts and summaries of articles and books that deal with the Bible and related literature, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha, Non-canonical gospels, and ancient Near Eastern writings. The abstracts - which may be in English, German, or French - are arranged thematically under headings such as e.g. "Genesis", "Matthew", "Greek language", "text and textual criticism", "exegetical methods and approaches", "biblical theology", "social and religious institutions", "biblical personalities", "history of Israel and early Judaism", and so on. The articles and books that are abstracted and reviewed are collected annually by an international team of collaborators from over 300 of the most important periodicals and book series in the fields covered.

Handbook of Feminist Research
Handbook of Feminist Research

Author: Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 793

ISBN-13: 1412980593

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The second edition of the Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, presents both a theoretical and practical approach to conducting social science research on, for, and about women. The Handbook enables readers to develop an understanding of feminist research by introducing a range of feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and methods that have had a significant impact on feminist research practice and women's studies scholarship. The Handbook continues to provide a set of clearly defined research concepts that are devoid of as much technical language as possible. It continues to engage readers with cutting edge debates in the field as well as the practical applications and issues for those whose research affects social policy and social change. It also expands on the wealth of interdisciplinary understanding of feminist research praxis that is grounded in a tight link between epistemology, methodology and method. The second edition of this Handbook will provide researchers with the tools for excavating subjugated knowledge on women's lives and the lives of other marginalized groups with the goals of empowerment and social change.

Tribals, Empire and God
Tribals, Empire and God

Author: Zhodi Angami

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-04-06

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0567671321

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Tribal biblical interpretation is a developing area of study that is concerned with reading the Bible through the eyes of tribal people. While many studies of reading the Bible from the reader's social, cultural and historical location have been made in various parts of the world, no thorough study that offers a coherent and substantive methodology for tribal biblical interpretation has been made. This book is the first comprehensive work that offers a description of tribal biblical interpretation and shows its application by making a lucid reading of Matthew's infancy narrative from a tribal reader's perspective. Using reader-response criticism as his primary method, Zhodi Angami brings his tribal context of North East India into conversation with Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus. Since tribal people of North East India see themselves as living under colonial rule, a tribal reader sees Matthew's text as a narrative that actively resists and subverts imperial rule. Likewise, the tribal experience of living at the margins inspires a tribal reader to look at the narrative from the underside, from the perspective of those who are sidelined, ignored, belittled or forgotten. Tribal biblical interpretation presented here follows a process of conversation between tribal worldview and Matthew's narrative. Such a method animates the text for the tribal reader and makes the biblical narrative not only more intelligible to the tribal reader but allows the text to speak directly to the tribal context.