Pramod K. Nayar

This book is a detailed study of the Indian graphic novel as a significant category of South Asian literature. It focuses on the genre’s engagement with history, memory and cultural identity and its critique of the nation in the form of dissident histories and satire. Deploying a nuanced theoretical framework, the volume closely examines major texts such as The Harappa Files, Delhi Calm, Kari, Bhimayana, Gardener in the Wasteland, Pao Anthology, and authors and illustrators including Sarnath Banerjee, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Durgabai Vyam, Amrutha Patil, Srividya Natarajan and others. It also explores — using key illustrations from the texts — critical themes like contested and alternate histories, urban realities, social exclusion, contemporary politics, and identity politics. A major intervention in Indian writing in English, this volume will be of great importance to scholars and researchers of South Asian literature, cultural studies, art and visual culture, and sociology.

Nation, history and critique

The Indian Graphic Novel

Seeks To Be A Comprehensive Introduction To The Fast Growing Discipline Of Literary And Cultural Theory. Elaborates Concepts And Explain Arguments Of Principal Thinkers And Specific Schools.

Literary Theory Today

This book studies human rights discourse across a variety of graphic novels, both fiction and non-fiction, originating in different parts of the world, from India to South Africa, Sarajevo to Vietnam, with texts on the Holocaust, the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, the Rwandan and Sarajevan genocides, the Vietnam War, comfort women in World War II and the Civil Rights movement in the USA, to mention a few. The book demonstrates the emergence of the ‘universal’ subject of human rights, despite the variations in contexts. It shows how war, rape, genocide, abuse, social iniquity, caste and race erode personhood in multiple ways in the graphic novel, which portrays the construction of vulnerable subjects, the cultural trauma of collectives, the crisis and necessity of witnessing, and resilience-resistance through specific representational and aesthetic strategies. It covers a large number of authors and artists: Joe Sacco, Joe Kubert, Matt Johnson-Walter Pleece, Guy Delisle, Appupen, Thi Bui, Olivier Kugler and others. Through a study of these vastly different authors and styles, the book proposes that the graphic novel as a form is perfectly suited to the ‘culture’ and the lingua franca of human rights due to its amenability to experimentation and the sheer range within the form. The book will appeal to scholars in comics studies, human rights studies, visual culture studies and to the general reader with an interest in these fields.

Drawing it Just Right

The Human Rights Graphic Novel

Nuclear Cultures: Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity aims to develop the field of nuclear humanities and the powerful ability of literary and cultural representations of science and catastrophe to shape the meaning of historic events. Examining multiple discourses and textual materials, including fiction, poetry, biographies, comics, paintings, documentary and photography, this volume will illuminate the cultural, ecological and social impact of nuclearization narratives. Furthermore, this text explores themes such as the cultures of atomic scientists, the making of the bomb, nuclear bombings and disasters, nuclear aesthetics and art, and the global mobilization against nuclearization. Nuclear Cultures breaks new ground in the debates on "the nuclear" to foster the development of nuclear humanities, its vocabulary and methodology.

Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity

Nuclear Cultures

This new Dictionary features a thoughtfully collated collection of over 150 jargon-free definitions of key terms and concepts in postcolonial theory. Features a brief introduction to postcolonial theory and a list of suggested further reading that includes the texts in which many of these terms originated Each entry includes the origins of the term, where traceable; a detailed explanation of its perceived meaning; and examples of the term’s use in literary-cultural texts Incorporates terms and concepts from multiple disciplines, including anthropology, literary studies, science, economics, globalization studies, politics, and philosophy Provides an ideal companion text to the forthcoming Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology, which is also edited by Pramod K. Nayar, a highly-respected authority in the field

The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary

This book examines writings by people living with Alzheimer's Disease and their caregivers. Its focus areas include the construction of the self in the face of diminishing linguistic and cognitive abilities, the stigmatization of ageing, the various narrative strategies that these texts (often collaborative) employ, the health activism and advocacy generated via a 'biosociality, ' and the ethics of care. It examines the 'disease writing' genre about a condition that ravages the ability to use language. It serves as a "literary" examination of the work done in this area through a critical reading of the memoirs of those with AD and caregivers and a healthy dose of literary theory. The book is a valuable resource for those interested in literary and critical theory and researchers in the field of ageing/dementia studies.

Poetics of the Forgetting Self

Alzheimer's Disease Memoirs

This volume brings together an unusual collection of British captivity writings - composed during and after imprisonment and in conditions of siege. Writings from the 'Mutiny' of 1857 are well known, but there exists a vast body of texts, from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma, and the Indian subcontinent, that have rarely been compiled or examined. Written in anxiety and distress, or recalled with poignancy and anger, these siege narratives depict a very different Briton. A far cry from the triumphant conqueror, explorer or ruler, these texts give us the vulnerable, injured and frightened Englishman and woman who seek, in the most adverse of conditions, to retain a measure of stoicism and identity. From Robert Knox's 17th-century account of imprisonment in Sri Lanka, through J. Z. Holwell's famous account of the 'Black Hole' of Calcutta, through Florentia Sale's Afghan memoir, and Lady Inglis's 'Mutiny' diary from Lucknow, the book opens up a dark and revealing corner of the colonial archive. Lucid and intriguing, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asia, colonial history, literary and culture studies.

From the 'Black Hole' to the 'Mutiny'

English Siege and Prison Writings

This accessible cultural history explores 400 years of British imperial adventure in India, developing a coherent narrative through a wide range of colonial documents, from exhibition catalogues to memoirs and travelogues. It shows how these texts helped legitimize the moral ambiguities of colonial rule even as they helped the English fashion themselves. An engaging examination of European colonizers’ representations of native populations Analyzes colonial discourse through an impressive range of primary sources, including memoirs, letters, exhibition catalogues, administrative reports, and travelogues Surveys 400 years of India’s history, from the 16th century to the end of the British Empire Demonstrates how colonial discourses naturalized the racial and cultural differences between the English and the Indians, and controlled anxieties over these differences

The Discourses of Empire

Colonial Voices

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism is a comprehensive survey of the major theoretical schools that have shaped our ideas about literary and cultural phenomena since the mid-twentieth century. Each chapter in this book traces the origin and development of a specific critical approach up to recent times, with a special focus on key thinkers. Chapters on critical race studies and ecocriticism distinguish this book from many others on this subject. Written in a student-friendly manner, it does not presume prior knowledge of Western philosophical thought and makes Theory approachable for students from various backgrounds. Apart from students of English literature, the book will serve the interdisciplinary interests of students of mass communication, history, sociology and gender studies. It will also appeal to the general reader who wants a clearer picture of that ‘opaque’ academic field called ‘theory’.

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism to Ecocriticism

Postcolonialism as a critical approach and pedagogic practice has informed literary and cultural studies since the late 1980s. The term is heavily loaded and has come to mean a wide, and often bewildering, variety of approaches, methods, politics and ideas. Beginning with the historical origins of postcolonial thought in the writings of Gandhi, Cesaire and Fanon, this guide moves on to Edward Said's articulation into a critical approach and finally to postcolonialism's multiple forms in contemporary critical thinking, including theorists such as Bhabha, Spivak, Arif Dirlik and Aijaz Ahmed. Written in jargon-free language and illustrated with examples from literary and cultural texts, this book addresses the many concerns, forms and 'specializations' of postcolonialism, including gender and sexuality studies, the nations and nationalism, space and place, history and politics. It explains the key ideas, concepts and approaches in what is arguably the most influential and politically edged critical approach in literary and cultural theory today

Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed

The Transnational in English Literature examines English literary history through its transnational engagements and argues that every period of English Literature can be examined through its global relations. English identity and nationhood is therefore defined through its negotiation with other regions and cultures. The first book to look at the entirety of English literature through a transnational lens, Pramod Nayar: Maps the discourses that constitute the global in every age, from the Early Modern to the twentieth century Offers readings of representative texts in poetry, fiction, essay and drama, covering a variety of genres such as Early Modern tragedy, the adventure novel, the narrative poem, Gothic and utopian fiction Examines major authors including Shakespeare, Defoe, Behn, Swift, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontës, Doyle, Ballantyne, Orwell, Conrad, Kipling, Forster Looks at themes such as travel and discovery, exoticism, mercantilism, commodities, the civilisational mission and the multiculturalization of England. Useful for students and academics alike this book offers a comprehensive survey of the English canon questioning and analysing the transnational and global engagements of English literature.

Shakespeare to the Modern

The Transnational in English Literature

David A. Jasen

Guide To The often complex area of postcolonial theory and literature from its historical origins to contemporary critical thinking and issues.

Bahadur Shah Zafar, the poet-king, was catapulted into the limelight when the mutineers from Meerut arrived in Delhi on 11 May 1857. After the mutiny , the last of the great Mughals went on trial on 27 January 1858 for aiding and abetting the mutineers of 1857. The 21-day trial in the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Special Audience, in Zafar s own palace, saw the British produce dozens of witnesses and documents to demonstrate Zafar s complicity in the Mutiny . He was eventually found guilty and exiled to Burma, where he died years later. The proceedings of this historic trial was first published in 1858, but has remained largely absent from studies and histories of colonial India. The current edition reproduces the text, documents and witness accounts of the day-by-day account of the trial. The Introduction, beginning with a short but comprehensive history of the East India Company and the Mutiny , places the trial in the context of the colonial state and its ideological structures. It then moves on to a reading of the trial s key narrative and rhetorical features. The text of the trial constitutes a great historical drama. The vast archive of evidence captures the theatre, the violence, the betrayals and the British anger. The legal arguments and eye-witness accounts reveal the human, political and bureaucratic dimensions of the trial of the nineteenth century. The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar makes for fascinating reading for the history buff and anyone interested in India 1857.

The Trial of Bahadur Shah Zafar

This timely book examines the rise of posthumanism as both a material condition and a developing philosophical-ethical project in the age of cloning, gene engineering, organ transplants and implants. Nayar first maps the political and philosophical critiques of traditional humanism, revealing its exclusionary and ‘speciesist’ politics that position the human as a distinctive and dominant life form. He then contextualizes the posthumanist vision which, drawing upon biomedical, engineering and techno-scientific studies, concludes that human consciousness is shaped by its co-evolution with other life forms, and our human form inescapably influenced by tools and technology. Finally the book explores posthumanism’s roots in disability studies, animal studies and bioethics to underscore the constructed nature of ‘normalcy’ in bodies, and the singularity of species and life itself. As this book powerfully demonstrates, posthumanism marks a radical reassessment of the human as constituted by symbiosis, assimilation, difference and dependence upon and with other species. Mapping the terrain of these far-reaching debates, Posthumanism will be an invaluable companion to students of cultural studies and modern and contemporary literature.

Posthumanism

Paul I Trensky

Michaela Harnick

Bruce Craig

The Fiction of Josef Škvorecký

For two hundred years India was the jewel in the British imperial crown. During the course of governing India – the Raj – a number of words came to have particular meanings in the imperial lexicon. This book documents the words and terms that the British used to describe, define, understand and judge the subcontinent. It offers insight into the cultures of the Raj through a sampling of its various terms, concepts and nomenclature, and utilizes critical commentaries on specific domains to illuminate not only the linguistic meaning of a word but its cultural and political nuances. This fascinating book also provides literary and cultural texts from the colonial canon where these Anglo-Indian colloquialisms, terms and official jargon occurred. It enables us to glean a sense of the Empire’s linguistic and cultural tensions, negotiations and adaptations. The work will interest students and researchers of history, language and literature, colonialism, cultural studies, imperialism and the British Raj, and South Asian studies.

The British Raj: Keywords

This new anthology brings together the most diverse and recent voices in postcolonial theory to emerge since 9/11, alongside classic texts in established areas of postcolonial studies. Brings fresh insight and renewed political energy to established domains such as nation, history, literature, and gender Engages with contemporary concerns such as globalization, digital cultures, neo–colonialism, and language debates Includes wide geographical coverage from Ireland and India to Israel and Palestine Provides uniquely broad coverage, offering a full sense of the tradition, including significant essays on science, technology and development, education and literacy, digital cultures, and transnationalism Edited by a distinguished postcolonial scholar, this insightful volume serves scholars and students across multiple disciplines from literary and cultural studies, to anthropology and digital studies

Pramod K. Nayar

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