Brian Russell Roberts and Michelle Ann Stephens, eds. Archipelagic American Studies. Duke University Press, 2017. 496 pages. Kindle $18.12. Paperback $31.95.…
01 Introduction To write a “short guide” to the intersection of queer theory with postcolonial theory seems perhaps like a…
The Beyond is, first of all, for the coolie who settles, a confused poetics, pregnant with silence looks, unsaid words.…
In the nineteenth century, the Guajajara tribe of Brazil discovered the medicinal qualities of a native plant called Pilocarpus jaborandi.…
In “Surface Reading: An Introduction,” Sharon Marcus and Stephen Best question the relation between literary criticism and political activism. Best…
A key movement in postcolonial studies was the 1980 intervention of the subaltern studies group. Within “subaltern studies,” a term…
In the middle of town in Sligo sits a statue of Rabindranath Tagore, the bearded Indian Nobel Laureate and…
Fanon, Frantz. Alienation and Freedom. Edited by Jean Khalfa and Robert J C Young. Translated by Steven Corcoran. Bloomsbury Academic, …
…you think the earth itself is dead … It’s so much simpler that way! Dead, you can walk on it,…
Ghosh, Vishwajyoti. This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition, Graphic narratives from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. Delhi: Yoda Press, 2013. 340 pages.…
Dear All, We are happy to formally announce the launch of our journal special issue ‘Postcolonial Perspectives in Game Studies’…
(Source: Wikimedia Commons) He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at…
Aruni Mahapatra Review: Mani, B. Venkat. Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books. Fordham University Press,…
Forthcoming in Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World (SCTIW) Review, Fall 2017. Rosie Warren, The Debate on Postcolonial…
Monbiot, George. How Did We Get Into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature. London: Verso, 2017. 342 pages. $9.99 ebook, $16.95…
McLeod, John. Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis. New York: Routledge, 2004. 194 pages. $45.95 paperback, $120.00 hardback Molly Slavin Graduate…
Mukherjee, Ankhi. What is a Classic? Postcolonial Rewrite and Invention of the Canon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 296 pages.…
Biography Partha Chatterjee was born in Calcutta in 1947. After finishing a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University…
Edouard Glissant was born in Saint-Marie, Martinique in 1928 to a family of five children. His father was working as…
Biography Maria Mies is a Marxist feminist scholar who is renowned for her theory of capitalist-patriarchy, which recognizes third world…
Biography Albert Wendt is an acclaimed novelist, poet and short-story writer who was born in Western Samoa in 1939. At…
I who am poisoned with the blood of both Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have…
Biography Verghese was born in 1955 to well-educated, South Indian Christian parents who migrated to Ethiopia (See Christianity in India,…
Biography Moyez G. Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950 and raised in Tanzania. His family was part of a…
“To outsiders, perhaps, Zimbabwe is just a name signifying some random geographical boundaries… But for me it is different. Rhodesia…
The Yoruba The Yoruba are one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, concentrated in the south of the…
Which Yeats? There are many versions of William Butler Yeats (b 1865 d 1939), Ireland’s most famous poet, dramatist, critic,…
Background The practice of hijab among Muslim women is one based on religious doctrine, although the Quran does not mandate…
Why Women Began To Travel Women began to travel in the nineteenth century for many personal and political reasons. Some…
Defining the Term In sweeping strokes, we can understand “globalism” as closely related to the term “postcolonialism” itself. The two…
What geographical regions constitute the Third World? Who are Third World women? Who defines and writes about the terms “Third…
Introduction Buying black pepper, cinnamon, cloves and other spices is so inexpensive now that it seems hard to believe that…
The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it…
Defining Representation Representation is a critical concept not only in postcolonial studies and academia, but in the larger cultural milieu.…
This article discusses contemporary performance and installation artists who address the objectification of the non-white bodies in Western culture: Coco Fusco…
The novel has been the aesthetic object of choice for a majority of postcolonial scholars. While postcolonial writers have by…
“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when…
Edward Said’s evaluation and critique of the set of beliefs known as Orientalism forms an important background for postcolonial studies.…
Introduction Monday, May 10, 1998 marked a day that will not soon be forgotten. It was the day India began…
Alfred Nobel Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1833. In 1842, the Nobel family moved to Russia, where…
The methods of partitioning land have undergone tremendous change since the thirteenth century. During medieval and renaissance times, royal dynasties…
The Colonizer In his essay “Literature and Society,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o explores the mechanisms of imperialism. To ensure economic and political control the…
This page was developed to mark the establishment of a multilingual, multi-religious poetry club for the community in Atlanta,…
The tradition of exhibiting people of color in Western societies has existed since the earliest encounters between Europeans and indigenous…
Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe, is a rich text for understanding the mechanisms of European colonialism and the relation between…
Introduction Although implicit in many other types of fictional works, self-reflexivity often becomes the dominant subject of postmodern fiction. In…
Introduction Before we begin our adventure through Karl Marx and his complex idea of commodity, the purpose and intent of…
Introduction Maps as we know them today are the result of millennia of study and observation. Unlike modern maps, which…
Magical Realism A literary mode rather than a distinguishable genre, magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based…
Meena Alexander (Nampally Road, Fault Lines, River and Bridge, The Shock of Arrival, Manhattan Music) Anjana Appachana (Incantations and Other Stories, Listening Now) Shauna Singh Bauldwin…
A wealth of languages make their home on the Indian Subcontinent. Estimates for the number of languages spoken range from over…
“… make language stammer, or make it ‘wail,’ stretch tensors through all of language, even written language, and draw from…
A full understanding of and appreciation for Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things requires that the reader be…
Introduction Kathakali, literally translated as “story-play,” is a classical Indian dance rooted in Hindu mythology. This dance, which is briefly mentioned…
A unique and multicultural group of people, the Jews of India add exciting flavor to India’s already diverse population. Centered…
Ethnomusicology Bruno Nettl, a music and anthropology professor at the University of Illinois, lists some of the various definitions for…
Let the Americans keep their sodomy, bestiality, stupid and foolish ways to themselves, out of Zimbabwe. – Zimbabwean President Robert…
Hegemony “Hegemony” was most likely derived from the Greek egemonia, whose root is egemon, meaning “leader, ruler, often in the sense of…
Introduction and Definition of Terms The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language defines geography as “the description of the earth’s…
The “Public” and “Private” Realms of Political Personhood Colonial powers brought with them daunting philosophical, theological, naval and mercantile traditions…
The Salt Tax After proclaiming the Declaration of Independence of India on January 26, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi came to an…
“The identity of a Filipino today is of a person asking what is his identity.” – Nick Joaquin “This is then…
Introduction The Field Day Theatre Company began as an artistic collaboration between playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea. In 1980, the…
The knife cut down the guardian of the village today. Now he is dead and gone. Before the village was…
One of the central modes of representation is essentialism. Diana Fuss says that essentialism is most commonly understood as…
The Law All major religions have their own laws which govern divorces within their own community, and many have separate…
Introduction The game of cricket has had a long and complicated history in the West Indies. Originally imported to the…
Literature and the Communist Movement in India Having a general understanding of the communist movement in India is incredibly important…
The colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and…
What is Colonial Education? The process of colonization involves one nation or territory taking control of another nation or territory…
Introduction Christians constitute the second largest religious minority in India next to Islam. The roughly 28 million Christians in India…
Chicana Defined “Chicana” refers to women of Mexican descent who are born and/or raised in the United States. Although the…
Background The caste system in India is an important part of ancient Hindu tradition and dates back to 1200 BCE.…
Introduction One of the most prestigious prizes in the literary field launched in 1969 as the Booker-McConnell Prize. Today, it…
Brief History of Indian Cinema India was first exposed to motion pictures when the Lumiere Brothers’ Chinematographe showed six soundless…
Arranged Marriages in India Arranged marriages have been part of the Indian culture since the fourth century. Many consider the practice…
A Brief Introduction to the Apartheid In 1910, after years of conflict and warfare, the Afrikaner community (the descendants of…
Historical Background South Africa is a land of abundant natural resources, mild climate, and fertile lands. Resources range from diamond…
“By G – I do love the Ingles. G-d dammee, if I don’t love them better than the French by…
Introduction While she is best known as a postcolonial theorist, Gayatri Spivak describes herself as a “para-disciplinary, ethical philosopher”– though…
Introduction Born in 1853 in Hertfordshire, England, Cecil Rhodes was the fifth son of Reverend Francis William Rhodes. Although Rhodes…
The power to create and innovate remains the greatest guarantee of respect and recognition. (Nettleford Mirror 227) Biography: The Formation of a Caribbean…
Biography Ashis Nandy is a prolific political psychologist, sociologist, and cultural critic. Nandy has also coauthored a number of human…
Introduction Born in Tunisia, a Jew in a predominately Muslim colony, Albert Memmi writes that he was “sort of a…
Biography Born in France of parents from Corsica, Octave Mannoni (1899-1989) belonged to a small group of critics who managed…
Introduction Unlike the United States, China regards its cinema as a high art rather than a form of entertainment. According…
Intellectual History in a Transatlantic Frame While some critics annotate the social and cultural impact that time-space compression has on…
Biography Born on September 15, 1929, in New York, New York, Murray Gell-Mann had a passion for learning that was…
Biography Frantz Fanon’s relatively short life yielded two potent and influential statements of anti-colonial revolutionary thought, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The…
Biography “The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that positions be taken on…
A critic of the way sinologists, Orientalists, and Western intellectuals have traditionally approached China and the “East,” Rey Chow refuses…
Biography Kuan-Hsing Chen grew up in Taiwan and completed his college education there before he went to the U.S. for…
Works Bahri has a particular interest in aesthetics, and has worked to develop this area in postcolonial studies. In Native Intelligence:…
Biography Born in 1942 in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas to sixth-generation Mexicanos, this self-described “Chicana, Tejana, working-class,…
Biography Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson was born on August 26, 1936 in Kunming, China to James O’Gorman and Veronica Beatrice…
Biography Peruvian novelist, essayist, journalist, literary critic, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa was born…
“In writing of Indian culture, I am highly conscious of my own subjectivity; arguably, there is more than one Indian…
Biography Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian born writer of international renown, is an artist proficient in multiple genres. Soyinka has written…
Biography Zadie Smith grew up in Willesden Green, England. She was born into a mixed race family; her mother is from…
Biography Leslie Marmon Silko, an accomplished Native American writer, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1948. She has a…
Biography Bapsi Sidhwa is Pakistan’s leading diasporic writer. She has produced four novels in English that reflect her personal experience…
Huda Shaarawi (1879-1947), a feminist nationalist activist, is considered to be a central figure in early twentieth century Egyptian feminism.…
Biography A small, wiry soap opera enthusiast with well-defined features and a ready smile, Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta…
As far as I am concerned, I no longer support notions of purity. Purity has become a thing of the…
“The magic of fiction seems to be the more specific you are, the more universal you end up becoming.” –…
Biography Simone Schwarz-Bart is an internationally known writer in the company of Guadeloupean novelists Maryse Condé and Myriam Warner-Vieyra. Born…
Biographical Overview On March 24, 1855, Olive Emilie Albertina was born the ninth of twelve children to Gottlob and Rebecca…
Biography Egyptian writer and feminist Nawal el Saadawi was born in 1931 in the village of Kafir Tahla. Her father,…
Biography Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947, just months before the Partition of British India. His father, Ahmed,…
The information provided on this site for Arundhati Roy is spread across multiple entries. Please click on the following entries for…
Biography A. K. Ramanujan, born in Mysore, India in 1929, came to the U.S. in 1959, where he remained until…
“Reading Portis is one of the great pure pleasures – both visceral and cerebral – available in modern American literature” (Rosenbaum…
Biography Born on April 11, 1951, Sapa’u Ruperake Petaia is a published poet. He served as the Director of the…
Biography Michael Ondaatje was born on September 12, 1943 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The son of Mervyn Ondaatje,…
Nigerian Literature – Cries of Protest Nigerian literature often expresses the struggles of a nation that has survived the exploitation of colonialism…
Biography Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan writer of Gikuyu descent, began a very successful career writing in English before turning to…
Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960) I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of…
Introduction “She is either the bravest or most foolish person I’ve ever met,” a friend of Nasrin’s is quoted as…
Biography The highly acclaimed director and producer from India, Mira Nair leapt into the world’s spotlight with her film Salaam, Bombay!…
Biography Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, on August 17, 1932. His Hindu grandfather had emigrated to Trinidad…
Biography Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27, 1940 to wealthy parents, Sudhir Lal and Bina Mukherjee in Kolkata (formerly…
“Cultural bastards, Janet, cultural bastards. Dat is what we is.” Out on Main Street Biography Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland…
Biography Rohinton Mistry was born in 1952 in Mumbai and is of Parsi descent. He earned a B. A. in…
Biography Canadian-based filmmaker Deepa Mehta was born in Amritsar, India in 1949. She received a bachelors and masters degree in…
“I know being a woman for me for a long time was being less, being excluded, being somehow cheap, being…
Biography Ian McEwan was born in 1948 in Aldershot, England. His father was an officer in the British Army and McEwan…
Biography In 1929, Paule Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York. She visited Barbados, her parents’ birthplace,…
Biography J. Nozipo Maraire was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1966 during the transition of the country from colonial Rhodesia…
Coal I is the total black, being spoken from the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open how a…
Family History Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1957, the son of exiled Chinese parents. His mother came from…
When I review these relationships they seem so odd. I have always been here on this side and the other…
Biography Growing up in America under the supervision of a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian,…
“From the start I tried to deny my Pakistani self . . . it was a curse and I wanted to…
Take up the White Man’s burden– Send forth the best ye breed– Go, bind your sons to exile To serve…
Biography Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson on the island of Antigua. She lived with her…
Biography Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was born on June 22, 1940 in Tehran, and passed away in July 2016. Interested in art…
Biography “This was our Pakistani life; this is how we existed outside Salford. A life none of my friends knew…
Biography Much postcolonial fiction available to English-speaking readers is written by native historical witnesses; that is to say, the author…
Biography Raj Kamal Jha was born in 1966 in Calcutta, India. He grew up with his father and mother; his…
Biography Keri Hulme, a New Zealand native, was born on March 9, 1947, in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is the…
Biography Vicente García Huidobro Fernández was born to a distinguished aristocrat family in Santiago, Chile in 1893. In his teenage and…
Biography Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain was born into a Bengali Muslim upper-class family in the small village of Pairaband in the district of…
Biography Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and…
“Love is so powerful, it’s like unseen flowers under your feet as you walk.” – Bessie Head, A Question of Power…
Biography A Guyanese of Amerindian, African, European, and possibly Asian descent (Harris 1999: 237), Wilson Harris was born in New…
Biography Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka in 1954, moving to London in 1972. He grew up speaking both…
Biography Novelist, poet, and critic Yasmine Gooneratne, a graduate of Bishop’s College, went on to graduate from the University of…
Biography Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Sri Lanka, Iran…
Biography Born 9 January 1929, Catholic, in Omagh, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, Brian Friel is one of Ireland’s most…
Biography On July 21, 1944 in Yaba near Lagos, Nigeria, Buchi Emecheta was born to Jeremy Nwabudike and Alice Okwuekwu…
Biography Roddy Doyle was born in 1958 in Dublin, Ireland. He attended St. Fintan’s Christian Brothers School in Sutton and later…
Biography Assia Djebar was born Fatima-Zohra Imalayen in Cherchell, Algeria on August 4, 1936. She published her first novel, La Soif, under…
Biography Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her work is widely known, as she has been published…
Biography Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in the city of Dacca (now Dhaka) in East Bengal (modern-day Bangladesh). As…
Biography Recognized as one of India’s foremost poets, Kamala Das was born Kamala Madhavikutty on March 31, 1934 in Malabar in…
Biography Rubén Darío was born on January 18, 1867 in Metapa, Nicaragua (later renamed Ciudad Dario). At birth, he was…
Biography Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1969. Her father immigrated to the United States just 2 years later…
Biography In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, in the town of Mutoko. She spent her early childhood,…
Biography Léon-Gontran Damas was born in Cayenne, French Guiana in 1912 to a middle-class family. His father was of European and African…
Biography David Dabydeen was born on December 9, 1955 to Krishna Prasad and Vera Dabydeen, the parents of a peasant…
Biography Jill Ker Conway was born in Hillston, New South Wales, Australia in 1934. She resided in the Australian outback…
Biography John Maxwell Coetzee, better known as J.M. Coetzee, was born in South Africa to Afrikaner parents on February 9th,…
Biography Michelle Cliff was born in Jamaica and grew up there and in the United States. She was educated in…
Biography A relative newcomer to the literary scene, Indian author Vikram Chandra garnered much praise for his debut novel Red Earth and…
Biography Aimé Césaire was born in 1913 in Martinique in the French Caribbean. He left for Paris in 1931 at the…
Biography Eavan Boland was born in Dublin in 1944 and lived in Ireland until she was six years old. At…
Biography Karen Blixen remains a complex figure in the writing and history of colonial Africa. Author, storyteller, and early colonizer,…
Biography Born in Fez, Morocco to a shopkeeper and his wife in December of 1944, Tahar Ben Jelloun is one of North Africa’s most…
Basquiat and Postcoloniality On Basquiat, art critic Robert Farris Thompson writes, “What identifies Jean-Michel Basquiat as a major artist is…
Biography Due to her first novel Anita Rau Badami was considered one of the newest writers in the vibrant field…
Biography Yehuda Amichai, uncrowned poet laureate of the State of Israel, was born Ludwig Pfeuffer to Orthodox Jewish parents in…
Biography Although Julia Alvarez was born in New York City on March 27, 1950, her family moved to the Dominican…
Biography Mary Elizabeth Alexander was born in Allahabad, India, on February 17, 1951. She passed away on November 21, 2018…
Biography Isabel Allende is one of Latin America’s foremost female writers. Through translation, her work has received acclaim in the…
Introduction Theodor Adorno was a philosopher, critic, and theorist who generated a vast body of works on many aspects of…
“I no longer feel inclined to make comments on my own work, which I feel should speak for itself.” (qtd.…
“Colonial racism is no different from any other racism.” – Frantz Fanon A Need To Talk Back While African American…