Heterosexuality in contemporary novels, re-examined using the frameworks of feminism and queer theory Drawing on feminist and queer theories of sex, gender and sexuality, this study focuses on female ...identities at odds with heterosexual norms. In particular, it explores narratives in which the conventional equation between heterosexuality, reproductive sexuality and female identity is questioned. - A timely exploration of the dynamic relationship between feminist and queer theory - Insightful close readings of acclaimed novels, including Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal, A. M. Homes' The End of Alice, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Alan Warner's Morvern Callar and Sarah Waters' Affinity - Topics range from spinsterhood and intergenerational sexuality to transgender and human cloning
In Reconsidering the Emergence of the Gay Novel in English and German, James P. Wilper examines a key moment in the development of the modern gay novel by analyzing four novels by German, British, ...and American writers. Wilper studies how the texts are influenced by and respond and react to four schools of thought regarding male homosexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first is legal codes criminalizing sex acts between men and the religious doctrine that informs them. The second is the ancient Greek erotic philosophy, in which a revival of interest took place in the late nineteenth century. The third is sexual science (or “sexology”), which offered various medical and psychological explanations for same-sex desire and was employed variously to defend, as well as to attempt to cure, this "perversion."
Oil, like other fossil fuels, permeates every aspect of human
existence. Yet it has been largely ignored by cultural critics,
especially in the context of the Global South. Seeking to make
visible ...not only the pervasiveness of oil in society and culture
but also its power, Oil Fictions stages a critical
intervention that aligns with the broader goals of the energy
humanities.
Exploring literature and film about petroleum as a genre of
world literature, Oil Fictions focuses on the ubiquity of
oil as well as the cultural response to petroleum in postcolonial
states. The chapters engage with African, South American, South
Asian, Iranian, and transnational petrofictions and cover topics
such as the relationship of colonialism to the fossil fuel economy,
issues of gender in the Thermocene epoch, and discussions of
migration, precarious labor, and the petro-diaspora. This unique
exploration includes testimonies of the oil encounter-through
memoirs, journals, and interviews-from a diverse geopolitical grid,
ranging from the Permian Basin to the Persian Gulf.
By engaging with non-Western literary responses to petroleum in
a concentrated, sustained way, this pathbreaking book illuminates
the transnational dimensions of the discourse on oil. It will
appeal to scholars and students working in literature and science
studies, energy humanities, ecocriticism, petrocriticism,
environmental humanities, and Anthropocene studies.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume
include Henry Obi Ajumeze, Rebecca Babcock, Ashley Dawson, Sharae
Deckard, Scott DeVries, Kristen Figgins, Amitav Ghosh, Corbin
Hiday, Helen Kapstein, Micheal Angelo Rumore, Simon Ryle, Sheena
Stief, Imre Szeman, Maya Vinai, and Wendy W. Walters.
In 1915, fourteen years before Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Doblin published his first novel, an extensively researched Chinese historical extravaganza: The Three Leaps of Wang Lun. Even more ...remarkably, given its subject matter, the book was written in Expressionist style and is now considered the first modern German novel, as well as the first Western novel to depict a China untouched by the West. It is virtually unknown in English. Based on actual accounts of a doomed rebellion during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the late 18th century, the novel tells the story of Wang Lun, a historical martial arts master and charismatic leader of the White Lotus sect, who leads a futile revolt of the “Truly Powerless." Densely packed cities and Tibetan wastes, political intrigue and religious yearning, imperial court life and the fate of wandering outcasts are depicted in a language of enormous vigor and matchless imagination, unfolding the theme of timidity against force, and a mystical sense of the world against the realities of power.
Winner of the 2015 Irish Association for American Studies Peggy O'Brien Book PrizeExamines the representation of trauma in contemporary American fiction and non-fiction
This book looks at the way ...writers present the effects of trauma in their work. It explores narrative devices, such as 'metafiction', as well as events in contemporary America, including 9/11, the Iraq War, and reactions to the Bush administration. Contemporary American authors who are discussed in depth include Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Tim O'Brien, Lorrie Moore, Mark Danielewski, Art Spiegelman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Anthony Swofford, Evan Wright, Paul Auster, Philip Roth and Michael Chabon.Contemporary American Trauma Narrativesoffers a timely and dissenting intervention into debates about American writers' depiction of trauma and its after-effects.
Globalization, Utopia, and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope explores the aesthetic and historical conditions that inform the recent convergence of the seemingly incommensurable domains ...of the postcolonial Third World and the genre of SF, particularly as expressed in the recent phenomenon of visionary SF narratives originating from postcolonial national cultures. Offering a materialist theorization of this surge of Third-World science fiction supported by careful and penetrating close readings, the book considers its formal emergence as representing a definitive shift in postcolonial literary and cultural production that finds its material provenance in the political, economic, and spatial dilemmas of globalization and its ideological vitality in the enduring project of utopian thought for the post-contemporary present.
This study offers a literary history of the war novel in Africa. Coundouriotis argues that this genre, aimed more specifically at African readers than the continent's better-known bildungsroman ...tradition, nevertheless makes an important intervention in global understandings of human rights. The African war novel lies at the convergence of two sensibilities it encounters in European traditions: the naturalist aesthetic and the discourse of humanitarianism, whether in the form of sentimentalism or of human rights law. Both these sensibilities are present in culturally hybrid forms in the African war novel, reflecting its syncretism as a narrative practice engaged with the colonial and postcolonial history of the continent. The war novel, Coundouriotis argues, stakes claims to collective rights that contrast with the individualism of the bildungsroman tradition. The genre is a form of people's history that participates in a political struggle for the rights of the dispossessed.
Meeting with my brother Yi, Mun-yŏl; Fenkl, Heinz Insu; Chang, Yoosup
2017, 20170404, 2017-04-18
eBook
Yi Mun-yol'sMeeting with My Brotheris narrated by a middle-aged South Korean professor, also named Yi, whose father abandoned his family and defected to the North at the outbreak of the Korean War. ...Many years later, despite having spent most of his life under a cloud of suspicion as the son of a traitor, Yi is prepared to reunite with his father. Yet before a rendezvous on the Chinese border can be arranged, his father dies. Yi then learns for the first time that he has a half-brother, whom he chooses to meet instead. As the two confront their shared legacy, their encounter takes a surprising turn.Meeting with My Brotherrepresents the political and psychological complexity of Koreans on both sides of the border, offering a complex yet poignant perspective on the divisions between the two countries. Through a series of charged conversations, Yi explores the nuances of reunification, both political and personal. This semiautobiographical account draws on Yi's own experience of growing up with an absent father who defected to the North and the stigma of family disloyalty. First published in Korea in 1994,Meeting with My Brotheris a moving and illuminating portrait of the relationships sundered by one of the world's starkest barriers.
Ladies and Gentlemen...I have to state that Mrs Lovett' s pies are made OF human flesh ! ' This shocking announcement provides the stunning d'. enouement TO a narrative first published OVER a period ...OF four months IN the winter OF 1846 - 7. The revelation marked ONLY the beginning,. however, OF the notorious career OF Sweeney Todd,. soon known TO legend AS the ' Demon Barber ' OF London ' s Fleet Street.The story OF Todd ' s entrepreneurial partnership WITH neighbouring pie - maker. Margery Lovett - at ONCE inconceivably unpalatable AND undeniably compelling - has subsequently provided the substance FOR. a seemingly endless series OF successful dramatic adaptations, popular songs AND ballads, novellas, radio plays, graphic novels, ballets, films, AND. musicals.Both gleeful AND ghoulish, the original tale OF Sweeney Todd, first published under the title The String OF Pearls,. IS an early classic OF British horror writing.It combines the story OF Todd 's grisly method of robbing and dispatching his victims with a romantic sub-plot involving deception, disguise, and detective work, set against the backdrop of London'. s dark AND unsavoury streets.This edition provides an authoritative text OF the first version OF the story ever TO be published,. AS well AS a lively introduction TO its history AND reputation.
