ABSTRACT
This volume looks at the implications of transcultural humanities in South Asia, which is becoming a crucial area of research within literary and cultural studies. The volume also explores various complex critical dimensions of transculturation, its indeterminate periodisation, its temporal and spatial nonlinearity, its territoriality and intersectionality.
Drawing on contributors from around the globe, the entries look at literature and poetics, theory and praxis, borders and nations, politics, Partition, gender and sexuality, the environment, representations in art and pedagogy and the transcultural classroom. Using key examples and case studies, the contributors look at current developments in transcultural and transnational standpoints and their possible educational outcomes. A broad and comprehensive collection, as it also speaks about the value of the humanities and the significance of South Asian contexts, Transcultural Humanities in South Asia will be of particular interest to those working on postcolonial studies, literary studies, Asian studies and more.
Foreword Amritjit Singh Introduction: Transcultural Humanities in South Asia: Constrictions and Connections Waseem Anwar Part I. Theorising the Transcultural Humanities: Reimagined Possibilities 1. Humanities and Hope Bill Ashcroft 2. Reimagining the Humanities in a Transcultural, Post-Truth World Waqas Khwaja 3. Post-cultural Crises and the Pandemic: What Humanities? Pradyumna S. Chauhan 4. Beyond Pillars and ‘Posts’: Transcultural Humanities in South Asian Literary Studies Feroza Jussawalla 5. The Role of Transcultural Humanities in Times of Crisis: Nadeem Aslam, Karan Mahajan, and Kashmir John C. Hawley Part II. Borderless Zones: Tracing a Poetics for Transcultural Humanities 6. Is there Life in this Author? The Living Author and the Business and Importance of the Humanities in South Asia Mark J. Boone 7. Sri Lankan Literature and Territoriality: The Politics of Literary Criticism Minoli Salgado 8. [Trans]Cultural Contact Zones – A Comparative Study of Archetypes: Persian Dastan and Greek Epic Traditions Areeba Tayyab and Kashif Jamshaid 9. Zones of Every Being: Transcultural Decolonisation and Border Thinking in Contemporary India Sayan Dey 10. Languaging Gesture/ Gesturing Language: A Case for Rekhti Poetry Anisur Rahman Part III. Postcolonial Inquisition and Transcultural Intersections: Politics, Place, Identity, Migration 11. Migration and the Lesson of Irony - On the Political Meaning of Humanities: Saadat Hasan Manto and Sǿren Kierkegaard Christine Habbard 12. From Post- to Para-Colonialism: (Trans) National and Cultural Intersections in Post-1988 Pakistani Anglophone Fiction Ali Usman Saleem 13. Bhutan, Western Arunachal Pradesh and Modern State-Making: Literary-[Trans]Cultural Mappings in Moi Akou Janam Lom and The Circle of Karma Rajashree Bargohain and Tshering Thinley 14. Migrant Voices: An Inquisition of the ‘Other’ Literature in Bangladesh Rukhsana R. Chowdhury 15. Beyond Identity Politics: Transcultural and Multiple Allegiances in Parajuly’s Land Where I Flee Binod Paudyal Part IV. Homing Transculturation: Nation, Partition, Periphery 16. Borders, Belonging and Diasporic Aesthetics: Tracing a Transcultural Conceptualisation of Home in South Asian Partition Fiction Nudrat Kamal 17. The Nation and its Peripheries: Borderland Narratives and Theories of Liminality Swatee Sinha and Anjali Gera Roy 18. The Long Partition: Reading Some Partition Writers Transculturally Tasneem Shahnaaz 19. Reconstructing Partition Memories in the New Millennium Muneeza Shamsie 20. Transcultural Location of Home in the Fiction of Gao Xingjian Farida Chishti Part V. Expressions of Transculturality: Theatre, Art, Communication, Curricula 21. Memory in Theatre, Theatre in Memory: Experiencing the ‘Self/Selves’ in Swadeshi Theatre (1905-1911) Mimasha Pandit 22. Locating the Transcultural Humanities in South Asian Art: Frescoes in the Lahore Fort Seh-Dara Kanwal Khalid 23. Responses Towards 9/11: Caricatures and Pashto Poetry from Pakistan Nukhbah Taj Langah and Kamal ud Din 24. 70 Years of Freedom of Speech and Expression in Pakistan: An Intracultural Analysis of Press/ Media in Time and Social Processes Altaf Ullah Khan 25. Learning to be ‘Glocal’: Reflections on Transgressive Theories and Transcultural Flows in Pakistani ELT Classroom and Curriculum Shirin Zubair Part VI. Transcultural Transformations: Ethics, Ideology, Dilemma 26. Aging, Literature and the Humanities: Transcultural Perspectives on Literary Gerontology in South Asia Saurav Kumar and Banibrata Mahanta 27. A Hindu in Pakistan (2011) and A Mad Man’s Diary (2014): Distantiation, Cultural Transformation and Redefinition of Pakistani Minorities Wajiha Raza Rizvi 28. Ethics and Empathy in Sri Lankan Representations of Refugees Maryse Jayasuriya 29. Dark Moon, Bright Crescent: Tagore in China Cynthia Leenerts 30. Transcultural Dilemma in The Good Muslim: An Analysis of Bangladesh through the Competing Visions of Maya and Sohail Asif Iqbal Part VII. Transcultural Solidarities: Gender and Sexuality 31. Envisioning the Role of South Asian Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Transcultural Humanities Kavita Daiya and Sreyoshi Sarkar 32. The Outsourcing of Pregnancy: Transnational Surrogacy in Contemporary South Asian Literature Jana Fedtke 33. Socioreligious Dichotomies and Indian Re-feminism: A Transcultural Construct of Goddesses and Women in Sidhwa’s and Mehta’s Water Syrrina Ahsan Ali Haque 34. Memoirs, Muslim Women and Transcultural Symbolic Solidarities Naila Sahar 35. Borders, Women and South Asian Transculturality Nosheen Yousaf Afterword: Transculturalism, the Way Forward… Fawzia Afzal-Khan
