This thesis explores selected texts by the contemporary author Colum McCann (b.1965), situating his work within a larger transnational Irish canon. The project traces how notions of Irish identity interact with experiences of diaspora, migration and race; throughout the thesis, close attention is paid to the role and function of literary form. After an introduction which maps out the material covered in the thesis, the project opens with a contextual chapter entitled ‘Deoraí: Exile, Wanderer, Stranger: (Post)colonial Ireland and making sense of place’. This chapter sets up the methodological frameworks that guide the thesis through a meditation on exile in an Irish and postcolonial context. My second chapter, ‘Deterritorialised novels: McCann’s short stories as Minor Literature in an (Northern) Irish Mode’, focuses on McCann’s short stories, paying particular attention to those set in the North of Ireland. Invoking Thomas MacDonagh’s notion of an Irish Mode and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of Minor Literature, I argue that the rejection of the novel in favour of the short story is a form of literary politics inflected with anti-colonial sentiment. Continuing my examination of literary form, my third chapter, ‘Nomadism and Storytelling in Zoli: oral culture, embodiment and travelling tales’, highlights the ambivalence of orality within McCann’s novel Zoli and works towards establishing what a textual practice of storytelling might be, in addition to probing at the representation of nomadic peoples across McCann’s work. The next chapter is entitled ‘Topography of Violence’: race, belonging and the underbelly of the cosmopolitan city in This Side of Brightness’. This discusses the cosmopolitan ethics that underpin McCann’s novel and how these are grounded by the close attention McCann pays to the experiential realities of America’s (often racialised) underclass through McCann’s depiction of interracial love. My final chapter ‘TransAtlantic: Frederick Douglass, the Irish Famine and the Troubles with the black and green Atlantics’, maps out the overlapping histories of the black and green Atlantics, tests the validity of the ostensible affinity between the two groups and asks how useful conventional chronological narratives are in the representation of their histories. Finally, I finish with ‘Minor Voices, race and rooted cosmopolitanism’, which concludes that McCann’s fiction articulates a need for rooted cosmopolitan and critically engaged nomadic thought which embraces Minor Voices and rejects exclusionary politics.

Russian Jews who left the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and its Successor States after 1989 are considered as one of the best qualified migrants group worldwide. In the preferred countries of destination (Israel, the United States and Germany) they are well-known for cultural self-assertion, strong social upward mobility and manifold forms of self organisation and empowerment. Using Suzanne Kellers sociological model of “Strategic Elites”, it easily becomes clear that a huge share of the Russian Jewish Immigrants in Germany and Israel are part of various elites due to their qualification and high positions in the FSU – first of all professional, cultural and intellectual elites (“Intelligentsija”). The study aimed to find out to what extent developments of cultural self-assertion, of local and transnational networking and of ethno-cultural empowerment are supported or even initiated by the immigrated (Russian Jewish) Elites. The empirical basis for this study have been 35 half-structured expert interviews with Russian Jews in both countries (Israel, Germany) – most of them scholars, artists, writers, journalists/publicists, teachers, engineers, social workers, students and politicians. The qualitative analysis of the interview material in Israel and Germany revealed that there are a lot of commonalities but also significant differences. It was obvious that almost all of the interview partners remained to be linked with Russian speaking networks and communities, irrespective of their success (or failure) in integration into the host societies. Many of them showed self-confidence with regard to the groups’ amazing professional resources (70% of the adults with academic degree), and the cultural, professional and political potential of the FSU immigrants was usually considered as equal to those of the host population(s). Thus, the immigrants’ interest in direct societal participation and social acceptance was accordingly high. Assimilation was no option. For the Russian Jewish “sense of community” in Israel and Germany, Russian Language, Arts and general Russian culture have remained of key importance. The Immigrants do not feel an insuperable contradiction when feeling “Russian” in cultural terms, “Jewish” in ethnical terms and “Israeli” / “German” in national terms – in that a typical case of additive identity shaping what is also significant for the Elites of these Immigrants. Tendencies of ethno-cultural self organisation – which do not necessarily hinder impressing individual careers in the new surroundings – are more noticeable in Israel. Thus, a part of the Russian Jewish Elites has responded to social exclusion, discrimination or blocking by local population (and by local elites) with intense efforts to build (Russian Jewish) Associations, Media, Educational Institutions and even Political Parties. All in all, the results of this study do very much contradict popular stereotypes of the Russian Jewish Immigrant as a pragmatic, passive “Homo Sovieticus”. Among the Interview Partners in this study, civil-societal commitment was not the exception but rather the rule. Traditional activities of the early, legendary Russian „Intelligentsija“ were marked by smooth transitions from arts, education and societal/political commitment. There seem to be certain continuities of this self-demand in some of the Russian Jewish groups in Israel. Though, nothing comparable could be drawn from the Interviews with the Immigrants in Germany. Thus, the myth and self-demand of Russian “Intelligentsija” is irrelevant for collective discourses among Russian Jews in Germany. / Russischsprachige Juden, die nach 1989 die Sowjetunion und ihre Nachfolgestaaten verlassen haben, zählen weltweit zu den bestqualifizierten Migranten. In ihren bevorzugten Zielländern (Israel, USA, Deutschland) zeichnen sie sich durch sichtbare Formen der kulturellen Selbstbehauptung, eine starke Aufstiegsmobilität und einen relativ hohen Grad der Selbstorganisation aus. Auf Grund des hohen Bildungsgrades und der dominierenden Berufsbilder konnte in Anlehnung an das Modell der „Strategic Elites“ von Suzanne Keller ein generell hoher Anteil an Eliten in der untersuchten Gruppe von Immigranten in Deutschland und Israel ausgemacht werden – v.a. professionelle, kulturelle und intellektuelle Eliten. Die Studie fragte danach, inwiefern Prozesse der kulturellen Selbstbehauptung, der lokalen und transnationalen Vernetzung und der ethno-kulturellen Selbstorganisation von den zugewanderten Eliten unterstützt oder sogar selbst befördert werden. Als empirische Grundlage dienten je 35 Experten-Interviews mit russisch-jüdischen Immigranten in beiden Ländern – dabei vorwiegend Wissenschaftler, Künstler, Schriftsteller, Publizisten/Journalisten, Lehrer, Ingenieure, Sozialarbeiter, Studenten und Politiker. Die qualitative Auswertung des Interviewmaterials in Deutschland und Israel ergab zahlreiche Gemeinsamkeiten, aber auch markante Unterschiede. Auffällig war, dass fast alle Interviewpartner mit russischsprachigen Netzwerken und Community-Strukturen gut verbunden blieben – unabhängig vom bisherigen Erfolg ihrer individuellen Integration. Fast durchweg waren sie sich ihrer überdurchschnittlichen beruflichen Kompetenzen (70% Akademiker) bewusst, die kulturellen, beruflichen und häufig auch politischen Ressourcen wurden mindestens als ebenbürtig zu jenen der Aufnahmegesellschaften betrachtet. Das Interesse an direkter gesellschaftlicher Partizipation und Akzeptanz war entsprechend hoch. Für das Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl der Immigranten in Israel und Deutschland bilden russische Sprache, Kunst und (Alltags-) Kultur nach wie vor eine Schlüssel-Rolle. Dabei entsteht für die meisten Immigranten kein zwingender Widerspruch, sich "russisch" im kulturellen, "jüdisch" im ethnischen und "israelisch" / "deutsch" im nationalen Sinne zu fühlen - insofern ein klassischer Fall von additiver Identitätsbildung, der auch die zugewanderten Eliten charakterisiert. Assimilation in die Mehrheitsgesellschaft ist keine Option. Tendenzen ethno-kultureller Selbstorganisation, die erfolgreiche individuelle Integrationsverläufe im neuen Umfeld keineswegs ausschließen, zeigten sich am intensivsten in Israel. So reagiert ein Teil der russisch-jüdischen Eliten auf allgemeine Ausgrenzungserfahrungen und/oder Schließungsprozesse der lokalen Eliten bewusst mit der Bildung eigener Vereine, Medien, Bildungseinrichtungen und sogar politischer Parteien. Insgesamt widersprechen die Ergebnisse der Studie dem weitverbreiteten Stereotyp vom russisch-jüdischen Migranten als eines pragmatisch-passiven „Homo Sovieticus“. Zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement war bei den untersuchten Eliten eher der Regelfall. Zu den Traditionen der frühen, legendären russischen „Intelligentsija“ gehörten fließende Übergänge zwischen Kunst, Bildung und gesellschaftspolitischem Engagement. Dies setzt sich in Israel in einigen Gruppierungen der russisch-jüdischen Immigranten nahtlos fort. Dagegen machten die Experten-Interviews in Deutschland deutlich, dass ein vergleichbarer „Intelligentsija“-Effekt hier nicht zu erwarten ist - und daher für kollektive Orientierungsprozesse der russischen Juden irrelevant bleibt.

This dissertation aims to contribute to the burgeoning field of Arab-American feminist critique through an exploration of the work of four contemporary Arab-American women poets: Etel Adnan (1925-), a poet and a visual artist and a writer, Naomi Shihab Nye (1952-), poet, a song writer, and a novelist, Mohja Kahf (1967-), a poet, an Islamic feminist critic and author, and Suheir Hammad (1973-), a hip-hop poet and political activist. The study traverses the intersections of stereotypical racial and Orientalist discourses with which these women contend, and which have been further complicated by being shaped against the backdrop of the “War on Terror” and hostility against Arabs, Muslims and Arab-Americans in the post-September 11 era. Hence, the study attempts to examine their poetry as a tool for resistance, and as a space for conciliating the complexities of their hyphenated identities. The last two decades of the twentieth-century saw the rise of a rich body of Arab-American women writing which has elicited increasing academic and critical interest. However, extensive scholarly and critical attention was mainly drawn to novels and non-fiction prose produced by Arab-American women writers as reflected in the huge array of anthologies, journal articles, book reviews and academic studies. Although such efforts aim to research and examine the racial politics that have impacted the community and how it relates to feminist discourses in the United States, they have rarely addressed or researched how the ramifications of these racialised politics and discourses are articulated in Arab-American women’s poetry per se. Informed by a wide range of postcolonial and United States ethnic theory and criticism, feminist discourses of women of colour such Gloria Anzaldúa's borderland theory, and Lisa Lowe's discussions of ethnic cultural formations in addition to transnational feminism, this study seeks to lay the groundwork for a complex analysis of Arab-American feminist poetics, based on both national and transnational literary approaches. The dissertation addresses the following questions: how does the genre of poetry negotiate identity politics and affiliations of belonging in the current polarized and historical moment? How do these women poets challenge the troubling oppressed/exoticised representations of Arab/Muslim women prevalent in the United States mainstream culture? How does each of these poets express their vision of social and political transformation? Emphasising the varying ethnic, religious, national, political, and cultural backgrounds and affiliations of these four poets, this dissertation attempts to defy any notion of the monolithic experience of Arab-American women, and argues for a nuanced understanding of specificity and diversity of Arab-American feminist experiences and articulations. To achieve its aim, the study depicts the historical evolution of Arab women’s poetry in the United States throughout four generations in order to examine the deriving issues and formative elements that contributed to the development of this genre, and also to pinpoint the defining characteristics marking Arab-American women poetry as a cultural production of American women of Arab descent. Through close readings and critical analyses of texts, the dissertation offers an investigation of some of the major themes and issues handled by these Arab-American women to highlight the most persistent tropes that mark this developing literary genre. Eventually, this study shows how literature, and specifically poetry becomes a conduit to investigate Arab-American cultural and sociopolitical conditions. It also offers productive explorations of identities and representations that transcend the rigid essential totalising categorisation of identity, while attempting to forge a new space for cultural translation and social transformation.