Postcolonial discourse is fast becoming an area of rich academic debate. At the heart of coloniality and postcoloniality is the contested authority of empire and its impact upon previously colonized peoples and their indigenous cultures. This book examines various theories of colonization and decolonization, and how the ideas of a British empire create networks of discourses in contemporary postcolonial cultures. The various essays in this book address the question of empire by exploring such constructs as nation and modernity, third-world feminisms, identity politics, the status and roles of exiles, exilic subjectivities, border intellectuals, and the presence of a postcolonial body in today's classrooms. Topics discussed include African-American literature, the nature of postcolonial texts in first-world contexts, jazz, films, and TV as examples of postcolonial discourse, and the debates surrounding biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand and Australia.

International scholars share their experiences with the challenges inherent in representing indigenous cultures and decolonizing cross-cultural research.

Bringing together contributions from various disciplines and academic fields, this collection engages in interdisciplinary dialogue on postcolonial issues. Covering African, anglophone, Romance, and New-World themes, linguistic, literary, and cultural studies, and historiography, music, art history, and textile studies, the volume raises questions of (inter)disciplinarity, methodology, and entangled histories. The essays focus on the representation of slavery in the transatlantic world (the USA, Jamaica, Haiti, and the wider Caribbean, West Africa, and the UK). Drawing on a range of historical sources, material objects, and representations, they study Jamaican Creole, African masks, knitted objects, patchwork sculpture, newspapers, films, popular music, and literature of different genres from the Caribbean, West and South Africa, India, and Britain. At the same time, they reflect on theoretical problems such as intertextuality, intermediality, and cultural exchange, and explore intersections – postcolonial literature and transatlantic history; postcolonial and African-American studies; postcolonial literary and cultural studies. The final section keys in with the overall aim of challenging established disciplinary modes of knowledge production: exploring schools and universities as locations of postcolonial studies. Teachers investigate the possibilities and limits of their respective institutions and probe new ways of engaging with postcolonial concerns. With its integrative, interdisciplinary focus, this collection addresses readers interested in understanding how colonization and globalization have influenced societies and cultures around the world. Contributors: Anja Bandau, Sabine Broeck, Sarah Fekadu, Matthias Galler, Janou Glencross, Jana Gohrisch, Ellen Grünkemeier, Jessica Hemmings, Jan Hüsgen, Johannes Salim Ismaiel–Wendt, Ursula Kluwick, Henning Marquardt, Dennis Mischke, Timo Müller, Mala Pandurang, Carl Plasa, Elinor Jane Pohl, Brigitte Reinwald, Steffen Runkel, Andrea Sand, Cecile Sandten, Frank Schulze–Engler, Melanie Ulz, Reinhold Wandel, Tim Watson Jana Gohrisch and Ellen Grünkemeier are based in the English Department of Leibniz University, Hannover (Germany), where they research and lecture in British studies with a focus on (postcolonial) literatures and cultures.

Recent crime fiction increasingly transcends national boundaries, with investigators operating across countries and continents. Frequently, the detective is a migrant or comes from a transcultural background. To solve the crime, the investigator is called upon to decipher the meaning(s) hidden in clues and testimonies that require transcultural forms of understanding. For the reader, the investigation discloses new interpretive methods and processes of social investigation, often challenging facile interpretations of the postcolonial world order. Under the rubric 'postcolonial postmortems', this collection of essays seeks to explore the tropes, issues and themes that characterise this emergent form of crime fiction. But what does the 'postcolonial' bring to the genre apart from the well-known, and valid, discourses of resistance, subversion and ethnicity? And why 'postmortems'? A dissection and medical examination of a body to determine the cause of death, the 'postmortem' of the postcolonial not only alludes to the investigation of the victim's remains, but also to the body of the individual text and its contexts. This collection interrogates literary concepts of postcoloniality and crime from transcultural perspectives in the attempt to offer new critical impulses to the study of crime fiction and postcolonial literatures. International scholars offer insights into the 'postcolonial postmortems' of a wide range of texts by authors from Africa, South Asia, the Asian and African Diaspora, and Australia, including Robert G. Barrett, Unity Dow, Wessel Ebersohn, Romesh Gunesekera, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sujata Massey, Alexander McCall Smith and Michael Ondaatje.

In the wake of the steady expansion and more recent explosion of Anglo-Indian and Indo-Anglian writing, and following the success of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the literature of the Indian diaspora has become the object of close attention. As a body of literature, it simultaneously represents an important multicultural perspective within individual ‘national' literatures (such as those of Canada or Australia) as well as a more global perspective taking in the phenomena of transculturalism and diaspora. However, while readers may share an interest in the writing of the Indian diaspora, they do not always interpret the notion of ‘Indian diaspora' in the same way. Indeed, there has been much debate in recent years about the appropriateness of terms such as diaspora and exile. Should these terms be reserved for the specifically historical nature of problems encountered in the process of acquiring new nationality and citizenship, or can they be extended to the writing of literature itself or used to describe ‘economic' migration arising out of privilege? As a response to these debates, Shifting Continents/Colliding Cultures explores the aftermath of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, including the resulting diaspora. The essays also examine zones of intersection between theories of postcolonial writing and models of diaspora and the nation. Particular lines of investigation include: how South-Asian identity is negotiated in Western spaces, and its reverse, how Western identity is negotiated in South-Asian space; reading identity by privileging history; the role of diasporic women in the (Western) nation; how diaspora affects the literary canon; and how diaspora is used in the production of alternative identities in films such as Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach.

This book explores the aftermath of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, including the resulting Diaspora. The essays also examine zones of intersection between theories of postcolonial writing and models of Diaspora and the nation.

This hugely popular A-Z guide provides a comprehensive overview of the issues which characterize post-colonialism: explaining what it is, where it is encountered and the crucial part it plays in debates about race, gender, politics, language and identity. For this third edition over thirty new entries have been added including: Cosmopolitanism Development Fundamentalism Nostalgia Post-colonial cinema Sustainability Trafficking World Englishes. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts remains an essential guide for anyone studying this vibrant field.