Diaspora and Literary Studies

Diaspora is an ancient term that gained broad new significance in the twentieth century. At its simplest, diaspora refers to the geographic dispersion of a people from a common originary space to other sites. It pulls together ideas of people, movement, memory, and home, but also troubles them. In this volume, established and newer scholars provide fresh explorations of diaspora for twenty-first century literary studies. The volume re-examines major diaspora origin stories, theorizes diaspora through its conceptual intimacies and entanglements, and analyzes literary and visual-cultural texts to reimagine the genres, genders, and genealogies of diaspora. Literary mappings move across Africa, the Americas, Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Pacific Islands, and through Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, Gulf, and Indian waters. Chapters reflect on diaspora as a key concept for migration, postcolonial, global comparative race, environmental, gender, and queer studies. The volume is thus an accessible and provocative account of diaspora as a vital resource for literary studies in a bordered world.

Introduction: Diaspora and Literary Studies Angela Naimou; PART I. ORIGINS REVISITED: 1. Displaced in Diaspora? Jewish Communities in the Greco-Roman World Erich S. Gruen; 2. Interoceanic Relational Diasporas: A Caribbean Perspective Supriya Nair; 3. The Language of Lakay: Diaspora as Project and Process in Haitian Cultural Production Régine Jean-Charles; 4. The Insufficiency of Paradigms: Diaspora in South Asian Literature Sangeeta Ray; 5. Lynchpins of Sovereignty: Forced Removal and the Deportspora Imaginary Mary Pat Brady; 6. Afro-Futurist Speculations and Diaspora Yogita Goyal; PART II. MAJOR CONCEPTS IN RELATION: 7. The Shock of Relation: Queer Diasporas in Law and Literature Mrinalini Chakravorty; 8. Strangers and Brothers: James Baldwin's Encounters with Africa Laila Amine; 9. Incommensurability, Inextricability, Entanglement: Stuart Hall and the Question of Palestine Keith P. Feldman; 10. Radical Black Poetics and South-South Movement Walt Hunter; 11. Remembering the Uses of Diaspora, or Palestine is Still the Issue Anthony Alessandrini; 12. Refugee Ecologies: Narratives of Water in Vietnamese Diaspora Marguerite Nguyen; 13. Diaspora and Detention: Behrouz Boochani, Manus Prison and Genres of the Borderscape Jini Kim Watson; Part III. READINGS in Genre, Gender,and GENEALOGIES: 14. Transpacific Noir Jinah Kim; 15. From Nothing to Something: Black Speculative Fiction and the Trayvon Generation Justin L. Mann; 16. Biological and Narrative Reproduction in the Family-saga Novels of Maryse Condé Rachel L. Mordecai; 17. The Embodied Feminist Futures of Diaspora Samantha Pinto; 18. Of Origin and Opportunity: Co-narratives of Refugitude in Roxane Gay's Ayiti Lauren K. Alleyne; 19. Arabic Diasporic Literary Trajectories: Reinvented Magical Realisms, Biopolitical Ruptures, and Planetarity Rita Sakr; 20. Decolonizing Across Borders: Diasporic-Indigenous Encounters and the Predicaments of Arrival Nadine Attewell.