Teachers tend to refrain from using a postcolonial perspective in their teaching of literaturebecause they do not know quite how to approach the task. The purpose of this essay is to remedy such a problem. The argument is built on three concepts: unhomeliness, dual identities and othering. These concepts will first be introduced within a postcolonial context generally and will then be studied more specifically – through close reading – as main themes in Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy. This essay aims to provide a model for educators to implement postcolonial theory in the classroom. Moreover, collaborative learning and dialogue will be presented as key elements in a teaching strategy that encourages teachers totackle the postcolonial perspective didactically.

'Post-colonial Dislocation and Amnesia: A Cure from Molefi Kete Asante's An Afrocentric Manifesto' aims at investigating the epistemological problems and theoretical inconsistencies in contemporary post-colonial studies. Capitalizing Molefi Kete Asante's theorizations on agency, location, identity, and history this project applies an Afrocentric approach in its reading of the post-colonial authors and theorists. While current postcolonial theory seems to be at stake with operationalizing many of its terms and concepts, the application of Afrocentric methods can help answering severe allegations raised by a number of critics against this discourse. Issues concerning spatial and temporal location of the term post-colonial, commodity status of post-colonialism, and crises in the post-colonial pedagogy can be addressed from an Afrocentric perspective based on a new historiography. To support the proposed arguments, the paper provides an extensive reading of two post-colonial writers from the Caribbean, and shows how they manipulate their apparent power in perpetuating the misrepresentations of the colonized people initiated by the colonial discourses. With a detailed discussion of the principles of Afrocentricity based on Asante's ground-breaking book An Afrocentric Manifesto, the paper proposes possible ways in which Afrocentric theory could be applied in addressing such misrepresentations and developing a true sense of identity for the oppressed people. / African American Studies

This thesis analyses the themes of history, memory, and authorship in the works of four women playwrights from the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In doing so, it aims to reveal the three levels of marginalization to which Caribbean women theatre practitioners are subjected: being a woman, being a French Caribbean woman, and being a French Caribbean woman who writes theatre. The thesis seeks to contribute to the expansion of the field of French Caribbean literary and drama studies, endeavours to redress the gender balance in studies on French Caribbean literature, and aspires to add to the existing body of work on French Caribbean women's writing. Therefore, the thesis aims to reveal and to analyse the world of French Caribbean women's theatre and to study how the playwrights address socio-political issues that affect their communities and influence their own writings and careers. The corpus consists of plays by Gerty Dambury, Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, and Suzanne Dracius from the 1980s to the early 2000s. While focussing on a different theme, each chapter rests its analysis on theatrical works of a similar genre. The analysis of the plays deploys theories of the theatre pertaining to postcolonial drama and gender. The first chapter serves as an introduction to a group of female French Caribbean writers and their predecessors. The second chapter is a study of two historical plays, focussing on the collective experience of historical events and the role played by women in those events. The third chapter analyses plays that problematize the relationship between the collective and the individual. The fourth chapter looks at the image of the French Caribbean female artist and the multiple barriers she encounters in achieving creative independence.

La migration est l’une des questions les plus troublantes dans le monde contemporain. Elle expose la fragilité de l’être humain qui se trouve dans une situation de changement radical et de transition tumultueuse. À cause de la violence qui est impliquée dans ce processus, le sujet plonge dans une position de vulnérabilité aiguë et la représentation de cet aspect dans la littérature et le cinéma francophones est saisissante et puissante. Notre travail considère le vécu difficile du migrant et la violence qui est exercée sur ce dernier à partir de trois grands axes ; le point de départ, le voyage et le point d’arrivée. Les auteurs et les réalisateurs qui, dans leurs œuvres, traitent de la figure du migrant ou l’incluent, révèlent la réalité complexe de l’expérience de la migration qui, dans la conscience collective occidentale, est généralement tronquée, simplifiée et/ou complètement écartée. L’étude de la représentation littéraire et filmique permet d’explorer les stratégies artistiques qui sont employées pour dire et montrer l’expérience au lecteur/spectateur et d’établir un réseau de connexions qui concrétise la souffrance et le tourment que l’Autre, pris dans le piège de la migration, subit. / Migration is one of the most disturbing and soul-searching issues in the contemporary world. It exposes the fragility of the human being who finds himself in a situation of radical change and turbulent transition. Owing to the violence involved in the process, the subject is plunged in a position of acute vulnerability and the representation of this aspect in francophone literature and cinema is striking and powerful. This work examines the difficult life of the migrant and the violence that is exerted on the latter from three main axes; the starting point or the point of departure, the voyage and the point of arrival. The authors and filmmakers who, in their works, deal with the figure of the migrant or include it, reveal the complex reality of the experience of migration which, in Western collective consciousness, is usually truncated, simplified and/or dismissed completely. The study of the literary and cinematic representation allows for the exploration of the artistic strategies employed to transmit the experience to the reader/spectator and for the establishment of a network of connections which concretises the suffering and the torment that the Other, caught in the snare of migration, endures.

The overall aim of the study is to investigate how 12 Years a Slave can help raise awareness among upper secondary students about racism and to inspire sympathy with the characters presented in passages regarding the cruelty and injustice of slavery. The study is based on literary didactics methods, applied to the textual analysis of the passages, to create a hypothetical scheme for teachers that can be used to work with slave narratives in the classroom. The analysis of the passages, in conjunction with the literary didactics methods used, provides methods through which students may increase their awareness of racism and sympathize with the characters in the book by creating their own plays, reenacting the cruelty committed against slaves. Also, when dealing with the injustice of slavery, students can imagine themselves being present even though they will not be able to experience it physically. This may help students sympathize with the main character and help them understand racism from the victim’s point of view.

This dissertation explores myth-making in Latin America by focusing specifically upon four Amerindian and mestizo figures: Doña Bárbara, mestiza protagonist of Rómulo Gallegos’ 1929 novel; Anacaona and Hatuey, Taíno caciques who first appeared in Bartolomé de las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552); and Andrés Chiliquinga, indigenous protagonist of Jorge Icaza’s Huasipungo (1934). The present analysis examines the evolution of these myths from their original appearance to literary and film versions throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in the Caribbean and Andean regions. The project focuses upon the ways in which artists have interpreted these myths, their embedding in society’s collective memory, and their mythical functions in anti- and postcolonial discourse. By breaking down each myth into its most basic structure, this project identifies the core connotations contained within that reveal each myth’s function as a cultural foundation in Latin America. It also examines how the versions of a myth depart from one another, thus underscoring possible critiques of the myth. Finally, it examines the ways in which some of these myths have become commodities, particularly in contemporary popular culture. By examining these figures as cultural myths—bridging past and present—, this research argues that a mythic-interpretive model proves effective as it leads us to a deeper understanding of the universal connotations contained not only within the stories chosen here, but the Latin American narrative as a whole.

<p>Genesis is central to both hegemonic and counterhegemonic conceptions of communal identity. Read one way, the book undergirds contemporary assumptions about the nature of communality and the categories through which it is constructed. Read another way, however, it undermines them. This project considers these two readings of Genesis, their asymmetrical approaches to the book, and the intersection between them. </p><p>Using family storytelling as an approach to biblical interpretation allows this study to hold together the constitution of the reading community and the interpretation of the biblical text. In a Eurocentric reading of Genesis, the constitution of the reading community governs engagement of the biblical text. Conversely, in the YHWH-centric reading advocated here, the biblical text governs the constitution of the reading community. This study reopens the question of what it means to be an "us" rather than leaving participation in an "us" as an (often unacknowledged) a priori condition of all interpretation. In doing so it does not deny the existence or the significance of such preexisting commitments, but rather it refuses to regard those commitments as fixed and final. </p><p>From an exegetical standpoint, this study challenges Eurocentrism by finding in Genesis a vision of communality that, in emphasizing the importance of living out the relatedness of all humans to one another and to God, holds the potential for more fruitful relationships between communities. From a methodological standpoint, it offers a reading of Genesis that incorporates features of the text that have been neglected by colonizing readings and avoids the difficulties and internal inconsistencies from which they suffer. Making use of Benedict Anderson's account of the relationship between the imagined community of the nation and religiously imagined communities, as well as Jonathan Sheehan's account of the Enlightenment Bible, this study argues that certain ways of reading the Bible arose to help the West articulate its sense of itself and its others. Drawing attention to the text's reception and the way in which Eurocentric approaches displace Jews and marginalize (the West's) others, this project considers alternative ways of conceptualizing the relationship between the Bible and those who call it their own.</p> / Dissertation

Following the first world exhibition, the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, exhibitions became routine events across the West that merged both education and entertainment to forward political and economic goals. For the most part scholars have taken the frequency, popularity, and propagandistic efforts of exhibitions at face value, viewing them as successful reassertions of the imperial, industrial, and technological superiority of Western nation-states. Though offering valuable insights into the cultural technologies of imperial rule, these works miss the complexities of imperial projects within specific temporal and geographical contexts. This manuscript traces the historical dynamics of India at exhibitions held in London during and after imperial rule: the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, the 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition, and the 1951 Festival of Britain. In historicizing the exhibitionary administration and display of India over time, this study argues for a more complex reading of exhibitions in which displays invoked a mélange of meanings that destabilized as well as projected imperial hierarchies. It also examines the ways in which Indians administered, evaluated, and contested imperial displays. Rather than seamlessly reinforcing imperial dominance, exhibitions, located within specific historical contexts, emerged as contested, multifaceted, and even ambiguous portrayals of empires.

Despite a large influx of Guatemalans to cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., their narrative has largely been subsumed in the traditional Latino/a immigrant narrative. The importance of the historical specificity and traumatic nature of Guatemalan immigration, as a consequence of the Central American revolutions, has only now begun to be studied by scholars such as Arturo Arias and Claudia Milian, though the field of Latino/a studies is still largely focused on immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Thus, through an examination of two novels by Guatemalan-American authors, Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier (1998/2000) and Tanya Maria Barrientos’ Family Resemblance (2003), I compare how each novel differently positions Guatemalan diasporic identity around traumas surrounding the Guatemalan civil war and diaspora. Ultimately, I argue that Tobar establishes Guatemalan diasporic fiction as a kind of refugee literature, while Barrientos attempts to fit the Guatemalan diasporic narrative into a traditional Latino/a immigrant narrative using the genre of chica lit, thus flattening out the unique historical experience of the Guatemalan civil war while also highlighting the constraints of the chica lit genre for Central American-American women writers. / text

This dissertation examines the ways in which socio-cultural, economic and religious ideologies shape discourses on women’s rights, higher education and empowerment in Ghana. The study starts from the premise that female identity in Ghana is constructed through discourses of reproduction that produce and reproduce unequal gender relations that negatively impact women’s higher socio-economic and educational attainments. Consequently, discourses of women’s rights and empowerment are inextricably linked to normative reproductive labour expectations. Using a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework, I argue that women’s rights and empowerment issues must be located within particular historical, local and global socio-cultural and political discourses in postcolonial societies. Subsequently, this study situates women’s rights concerns within the larger framework of global systemic inequalities that reinforce the local socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantages of women in Ghana. I interviewed women’s rights activists, conducted focus group discussions with male and mostly female participants during an intensive six-month field study. In line with postcolonial feminist epistemologies, I consider participants as knowledgeable subjects in the production of knowledge about their lived realities, by centering their voices and experiences in my analyses. The experiences of research participants (heterogeneous as they are) provide excellent insights into transnational feminisms, gendered postcolonial landscapes, and global cultural patriarchal hegemonies. These experiences also illustrate how global discourses of rights provide leverage to simultaneously challenge and politicize colonial discourses of race and gender in the global south. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-08 16:23:06.155