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Following decades of LGBTQ+ activism, South Korea has seen a flowering of queer literature, film, and Internet culture. Many openly gay, lesbian, transgender, and other queer Korean writers find themselves in the national and international spotlight. But the rich variety of queer representation also extends into the Korean past, as this volume illustrates.
Beginning with contemporary works of fiction by Kim Bi, Sang Young Park, and Yi Seoyoung and reaching back through the last century, this collection includes works by the canonical authors Yi Kwangsu, Yi Kiyŏng, Ch'oe Chŏnghŭi, and O Chŏnghŭi as well as stories by Yu Sŭngjin and Kim Sunyŏng that have been recovered from archives. The introduction places these representations of queerness in their historical and cultural context, explores the sometimes problematic norms found in the stories, and considers the potential these texts hold for destabilizing binaries of sex and gender.
Faced with dramatic social and political changes, Korean writers of the twentieth century—writing in the context of Japanese imperialism, World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War era—explored many pressing questions about modern life: What is the relationship between literature and society? How can intellectual concepts be used politically, for good or ill? What are the differences between Eastern and Western cultures?
The essays in this collection, originally published between 1933 and 1957, explore these and other questions through varying lenses, including liberal humanism, socialism, fascism, and an early form of North Korea's Juche thought. Featuring works by Paik Ch'ŏl, Sŏ Insik, Ŏm Hosŏk, and Ch'oe Chaesŏ, the volume highlights the diversity of twentieth-century Korean thought, its developments during periods of upheaval, and its engagement with ideas of modernity that were being shared around the world.
The e-book edition of this title is available from Barnes and Noble and Apple. It is not available from Amazon.
As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.
Central America has a long history as a site of cultural and political exchange, from Mayan and Nahua trade networks to the effects of Spanish imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. In Teaching Central American Literature in a Global Context, instructors will find practical, interdisciplinary, and innovative pedagogical approaches to the cultures of Central America that are adaptable to various fields of study. The essays map out classroom lessons that encourage students to relate writings and films to their own experience of global interconnectedness and to read critically the history that binds Central America to the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In the context of debates about immigration and a growing Central American presence in the United States, this book provides vital resources about the region’s cultural production and covers trends in Central American literary studies including Mayan and other Indigenous literatures, modernismo, Jewish and Afro-descendant literatures, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and contemporary texts and films.
From the short stories and journalism of Sui Sin Far to Maxine Hong Kingston's pathbreaking The Woman Warrior to recent popular and critical successes such as Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians, Asian North American literature and media encompass a long history and a diverse variety of genres and aesthetic approaches.
The essays in this volume provide context for understanding the history of Asian immigrants to the United States and Canada and the experiences of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Contributors address historical contexts, from the early enactment of Asian exclusion laws to the xenophobia following 9/11, and provide tools for textual analysis. The essays explore conventionally literary texts, genres such as mystery and speculative fiction, historical documents and legal texts, and visual media including films, photography, and graphic novels, emphasizing the ways that creators have crossed boundaries of genre and produced innovative new forms.
Georges Ngal's pathbreaking satire Giambatista Viko explores the vexed relations between metropolitan centers and peripheral former colonies through its titular antihero, an African professor at an African studies institute divided between European-focused cosmopolitans and Africanists. Struggling to write the great African novel and subject to abuse, Viko realizes he can no longer separate the African and the European parts of his multilayered, African francophone culture. Viko's fate is a warning about the perils of artistic creation in a world where power is not shared. Part of the wave of African novels of the 1960s and 1970s that grappled with the disenchantments of decolonization, Giambatista Viko can be read at once as a Congolese novel, a francophone novel, and a work of world literature.
Taking up the idea that teaching is a political act, this collection of essays reflects on recent trends in ecocriticism and the implications for pedagogy. Focusing on a diverse set of literature and media, the book also provides background on historical and theoretical issues that animate the field of postcolonial ecocriticism. The scope is broad, encompassing not only the Global South but also parts of the Global North that have been subject to environmental degradation as a result of colonial practices. Considering both the climate crisis and the crisis in the humanities, the volume navigates theoretical resources, contextual scaffolding, classroom activities, assessment, and pedagogical possibilities and challenges. Essays are grounded in environmental justice and the project to decolonize the classroom, addressing works from Africa, New Zealand, Asia, and Latin America and issues such as queer ecofeminism, disability, Latinx literary production, animal studies, interdisciplinarity, and working with environmental justice organizations.
Based on real events of the French Resistance during World War II, Édith Thomas’s stories explore how ordinary people respond to the extraordinary conditions of political occupation. The stories, first published under the title Contes d’Auxois (Auxois Stories) by an underground press in 1943, were written to oppose Vichy-Nazi propaganda and to offer encouragement to civilians who felt resigned to defeat.
Whether lining up to wait for food, tuning in to a forbidden radio broadcast, adapting to living side by side with German soldiers, or preparing for an act of sabotage, the characters in these stories must make choices in highly compromised circumstances on a daily basis. As the characters confront their own suffering and that of others, their actions inspire readers to consider the nature of heroism, the idea that people can share a common humanity with their enemies, and the possibility for individuals to find solidarity in an overwhelming, isolating world.
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