Weary Sons of Conrad

Weary Sons of Conrad
Author: Brenda Cooper
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2002
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:
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"Is it possible for European and North American men to depict Africa in a wise and non-exploitative manner?" That's the question Cooper (African studies, U. of Cape Town, South Africa) hopes to answer in her examination of writers whose opposition to racism, the nature of imperialism, and gender stereotypes make them "weary" inheritors of the legacy of Joseph Conrad. She borrows concepts and methodologies from Said's Orientalism, postmodernism, Lacanian theory, and other areas, rejecting a unified approach. Among the works she examines are Adam Thorpe's Pieces of Light, Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library, Patrick Roscoe's The Lost Oasis, William Boyd's Brazzaville Beach, Will Self's Great Apes, Peter Hoeg' s The Woman and the Ape, and Lawrence Norfolk's The Pope's Rhinoceros. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

African, American

African, American
Author: David Peterson del Mar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2017-06-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1783608552
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Africa has long gripped the American imagination. From the Edenic wilderness of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan novels to the 'black Zion' of Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement, all manner of Americans - whether white or black, male or female - have come to see Africa as an idealized stage on which they can fashion new, more authentic selves. In this remarkable, panoramic work, David Peterson del Mar explores the ways in which American fantasies of Africa have evolved over time, as well as the role of Africans themselves in subverting American attitudes to their continent. Spanning seven decades, from the post-war period to the present day, and encompassing sources ranging from literature, film and music to accounts by missionaries, aid workers and travel writers, African, American is a fascinating deconstruction of 'Africa' as it exists in the American mindset.

Colonial Odysseys

Colonial Odysseys
Author: David Adams
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2018-08-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501720422
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Works such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust explore the relationship between Britain and its colonies when the British Empire was at its height. David Adams observes that, because of their structure and specific literary allusions, they also demand to be read in relation to the epic tradition. The elegantly written and powerfully argued Colonial Odysseys focuses on narratives published in English between 1890 and 1940 in which protagonists journey from the familiar world of Europe to alien colonial worlds. The underlying concerns of these narratives, Adams discovers, are often less political or literary than metaphysical: in each of these fictions a major character dies as a result of the journey, inviting reflection on the negation of existence. Repeatedly, imaginative encounters with distant, uncanny colonies produce familiar, insular presentations of life as an odyssey, with death as the home port. Expanding postcolonial and Marxist theories by drawing on the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg, Adams finds in this preoccupation with mortality a symptom of the failure of secular culture to give meaning to death. This concern, in his view, shapes the ways modernist narratives reinforce or critique imperial culture—the authors project onto British imperial experience their anxieties about the individual's relation to the absolute.

Essay and General Literature Index

Essay and General Literature Index
Author: Minnie Earl Sears
Publisher:
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2004
Genre: Electronic reference sources
ISBN:
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Includes "List of books indexed" (published also separately).

Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing

Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing
Author: Catharine Mee
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2015-03-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1783084200
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This critical study examines the theme of interpersonal encounter in a range of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century travel writing written in French and Italian. Structured typologically, each chapter focuses on a typical activity that brings traveller-protagonists into contact with other people. Drawing on literary critical studies of travel writing, sociological and anthropological approaches to tourism, as well as research in French and Italian area studies, ‘Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing’ locates the concept of encounter within the context of modern tourism.

White Saviorism and Popular Culture

White Saviorism and Popular Culture
Author: Kathryn Mathers
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000774597
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This book interrogates the white savior industrial complex by exploring how America continues to present an imagined Africa as a space for its salvation in the 21st century. Through close readings of multiple mediated sites where Americans imagine Africa, White Saviorism and Popular Culture examines how an era of new media technologies is reshaping encounters between Africans and westerners in the 21st century, especially as Africans living and experiencing the consequences of western imaginings are also mobilizing the same mediated spaces. Kathryn Mathers emphasizes that the articulation of different forms of humanitarian engagement between America and Africa marks the necessity to interrogate the white savior industrial complex and the ways Africa is being asked to fulfill American needs as life in the United States becomes increasingly intolerable for Black Americans. Drawing on case studies from Savior Barbie (@barbiesavior) to Black Panther and Black is King, Mathers posits that global imperialism not only still reigns, but that it also disguises white supremacy by outsourcing Black American emancipation onto an imagined Africa. This is crucial reading for courses on the cultural politics of representation, particularly in relation to race, social media and popular culture, as well as anyone interested in issues of representation in the global humanitarianism industry.

The Weight of Winter

The Weight of Winter
Author: Cathie Pelletier
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402294883
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Winner of the New England Book Award"Cathie Pelletier generates the sort of excitement that only writers at the very top of their form can provide."—Stephen King Welcome to Mattagash, Maine, a small, quirky town where everyone's personal lives are as entwined as their family trees. On the day of the first snowfall, the residents brace themselves for the long winter ahead. Mere survival will be hard; dealing with each other is another story. As winter settles in, various Mattagashians careen from conundrum to conundrum, trying to save dying small businesses, caring for crabby loved ones, and cruising through town, stirring up gossip any way they can get it. Through it all, 107-year old Mathilda Fennelson reflects on her life as the town's oldest resident, born the year Mattagash was founded. Through her dreams and memories, she reveals the scrappy, strange, and earnest pioneer history of these people weighed down by their own existence. At once funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, The Weight of Winter is a perfect for fans of Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout), The Language of Flowers (Vanessa Diffenbaugh), and The Good House (Ann Leary) who will fall in love with Mattagash and its people. More from Mattagash, Maine: The Funeral Makers (Book 1): Mattagash, Maine: a quiet town rocked by scandal, seduction, mayhem, blackmail, and the only recorded case of beriberi on the entire North American continent! Wedding on the Banks (Book 2): Amy Joy Lawler just announced her engagement—to an outsider! The Weight of Winter (Book 3) The One-Way Bridge (Book 4): Return to Mattagash—the anything but tranquil town where a mysterious dead body has just been found in the woods. What readers are saying about The Weight of Winter "While wildly funny at time, The Weight of Winter is a much darker and even more compelling novel than was the first book in the series." "Wonderfully written with humor, yet extremely hard-hitting." "This was one of those books that I looked forward to falling back into each time I picked it up, and each time, it felt like going home." What reviewers are saying about The Weight of Winter "Pelletier's ear for dialogue is exceptional, and her characters' interior monologues, what they think but don't say, are subversive, humorous and heartbreaking."—Publishers Weekly "Frequently funny and always poignant, it is a chronicle of past and present times, detailing lost dreams, found meaning, and echoing the sins of generations."—Library Journal What people are saying about Cathie Pelletier "Nobody walks the knife-edge of hilarity and heartbreak more confidently than Cathie Pelletier."— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls "It is Pelletier's gift to be able to coax the drama from stony ground without artifice or sentimentality."—Boston Globe "An ambitious, fearless novelist."—The Washington Post "Cathie does a wonderful job of capturing [her characters'] moods and loves and losses, and yearnings...Her writing is lovely and so descriptive"— Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT "Sharp stuff...Her sentences are powerful and unique as snowflakes."—New York Times

Hollywood’s Africa after 1994

Hollywood’s Africa after 1994
Author: MaryEllen Higgins
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0821444336
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Hollywood’s Africa after 1994 investigates Hollywood’s colonial film legacy in the postapartheid era, and contemplates what has changed in the West’s representations of Africa. How do we read twenty-first-century projections of human rights issues—child soldiers, genocide, the exploitation of the poor by multinational corporations, dictatorial rule, truth and reconciliation—within the contexts of celebrity humanitarianism, “new” military humanitarianism, and Western support for regime change in Africa and beyond? A number of films after 1994, such as Black Hawk Down, Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond, The Last King of Scotland, The Constant Gardener, Shake Hands with the Devil, Tears of the Sun, and District 9, construct explicit and implicit arguments about the effects of Western intervention in Africa. Do the emphases on human rights in the films offer a poignant expression of our shared humanity? Do they echo the colonial tropes of former “civilizing missions?” Or do human rights violations operate as yet another mine of sensational images for Hollywood’s spectacular storytelling? The volume provides analyses by academics and activists in the fields of African studies, English, film and media studies, international relations, and sociology across continents. This thoughtful and highly engaging book is a valuable resource for those who seek new and varied approaches to films about Africa. Contributors Harry Garuba and Natasha Himmelman Margaret R. Higonnet, with Ethel R. Higgonet Joyce B. Ashuntantang Kenneth W. Harrow Christopher Odhiambo Ricardo Guthrie Clifford T. Manlove Earl Conteh-Morgan Bennetta Jules-Rosette, J. R. Osborn, and Lea Marie Ruiz-Ade Christopher Garland Kimberly Nichele Brown Jane Bryce Iyunolu Osagie Dayna Oscherwitz