Silvia Schultermandl

Jana Aresin

Si Sophie Pages Whybrew

Dijana Simic

What makes up a public, what governs dominant discourses, and in which ways can counterpublics be created through narrative? This edited collection brings together essays on affect and narrative theory with a focus on the topics of gender and sexuality. It explores the power of narrative in literature, film, art, performance, and mass media, the construction of subjectivities of gender and sexuality, and the role of affect in times of crisis. By combining theoretical, literary, and analytical texts, the contributors offer methodological impulses and reflect on the possibilities and limitations of affect theory in cultural studies.

Narrative Counterpublics of Gender and Sexuality

Affective Worldmaking

Transnational Matrilineage offers a novel approach to Asian American literature, including texts by Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Mei Ng, Nora Okja Keller and Vineeta Vijayaragahavan, with particular attention to depictions of transnational solidarity (that is the sense of community between women of different cultures or cultural affiliations) between Asian-born mothers and their American-born daughters. While focusing on the mother-daughter conflicts these texts portray, this book also contributes to ongoing debates in transnational feminism by scrutinizing the representation of Asia in Asian American literature.

Mother Daughter Conflicts in Asian American Literature

Transnational Matrilineage

Klaus Rieser

This edited collection applies kinship as an analytical concept to better understand the affective economies, discursive practices, and aesthetic dimensions through which cultural narratives of belonging establish a sense of intimacy and affiliation. In North American and European ethnic literatures, kinship has several social functions: negotiating diasporic belonging in and outside of the perimeters of bloodlines and genealogy; positioning queer-feminist interventions to counter ethno-nationalist narratives of belonging; challenging liberal sentimentalist narratives, such as those grafted onto the bodies of transnational adoptees; re-formulating cultural heterogeneity through interracial and interethnic kinship constellations outside either post-racial assumptions about colorblindness or celebrations of racial and ethnic pluralism. In all of these cases, kinship features as a common theme through which contemporary authors attend to challenges of conscribing individuals into inclusive, counter-hegemonic cultural narratives of belonging.

Ethnicity and Kinship in North American and European Literatures

Sebnem Toplu

In this era of increasing global mobility, identities are too complex to be captured by concepts that rely on national borders for reference. Such identities are not unified or stable, but are fluid entities which constantly push at the boundaries of the nation-state, thereby re-defining themselves and the nation-state simultaneously. Contemporary literature pays specific attention to internal and external notions of belonging ("Politics of Motion") and definitions of self resulting from interpersonal relationships ("Politics of Longing"). This collection looks at texts by authors who are British, American, or Canadian, but for whom a self-definition according national parameters is insufficient.

The Politics of Transnational Identity

A Fluid Sense of Self

May Friedman

The essays in Click and Kin span the globe, examining transnational connections that touch in the United States, Canada, Mexico, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

Transnational Identity and Quick Media

Click and Kin

Stereotypes and cultural imperialism often provide a framework of fixed characteristics for postmodern life, yet fail to address the implications of questions such as, "Where are you from?" Growing Up Transnational challenges the assumptions behind this fixed framework to look at the interconnectivity, conflict, and contradictions within current discussions of identity and kinship. This collection offers a fresh, feminist perspective on family relations, identity politics, and cultural locations in a global era. Using an interdisciplinary approach from fields including gender studies, postcolonial theory, and literary theory, this volume questions the concept of hybridity and the tangible implications of assumed identities. The rich personal narratives of the authors explore hyphenated identities, hybridized families, and the challenges and rewards of lives on and beyond borders. The result is a new transnational sensibility that explores the redefinition of the self, the family, and the nation.

Silvia Schultermandl

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