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Between the Lines: Literary Transnationalism and African American Poetics

Monique-Adelle Callahan

This book maintains that the poetic texts examined here constitute an active process of composing history; they are not simply historicized. They give name to the nation and compose of a ... More

This book maintains that the poetic texts examined here constitute an active process of composing history; they are not simply historicized. They give name to the nation and compose of a historical narrative for its denizens. They are literary artifacts, bearing the vestiges of the past while provoking new interpretations. As visionaries and composers of New World history, Frances Harper, Cristina Ayala and Auta de Souza are a part of a larger process of conceptualizing freedom in the New World. Frances Harper’s trans-hemispheric poetic gestures delimit the scope of this project. By exemplifying the kind of readings that can evolve from following one poet’s trans-hemispheric allusions and articulate the fundamentally transnational aspect of African American literature in the United States, and inspire more re-evaluations of trans-hemispheric literary currents across national boundaries in afrodescendente literatures. The spectre of race and its particular performances of gender identities among afrodescendente peoples in the New World, informs these poetics but does not conform them to a monolithic body of national literature. Afrodescendente poetry in the Americas highlights the power of words to imagine new histories and new forms of identity. In their interplay, the poems tell us certain truths about how the concept of freedom can evolve. They say: “Freedom” cannot be understood as a byproduct of slavery’s abolition. They say: Freedom is a poetic process. They say: Freedom cannot just be legislated, it has to be written. Less

Conspiracy and Virtue: Women, Writing, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England

Susan Wiseman

What was the relationship between woman and politics in seventeenth century England? Responding to this question, Conspiracy and Virtue argues that theoretical exclusion of women from ... More

What was the relationship between woman and politics in seventeenth century England? Responding to this question, Conspiracy and Virtue argues that theoretical exclusion of women from the political sphere shaped their relation to it. Rather than producing silence, this exclusion generated rich, complex, and oblique political involvements which this study traces through the writings of both men and women. Pursuing this argument, Conspiracy and Virtue engages the main writings on women's relationship to the political sphere including debates on the public sphere and on contract theory. Writers and figures discussed include many authors who are not often studied together, such as Elizabeth Avery, Aphra Behn, Anne Bradstreet, Maragret Cavendish, Queen Christina of Sweden, Anne Halkett, Brilliana Harley, Lucy Hutchinson, John Milton, Elizabeth Poole, Sara Wight, and Henry Jessey. Less

Cornelia Sorabji: India's Pioneering Woman Lawyer

Suparna Gooptu

This book presents the biography of Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954), the first woman to study law at Oxford. A Parsee and daughter of a converted Christian, Cornelia was among the early ... More

This book presents the biography of Cornelia Sorabji (1866–1954), the first woman to study law at Oxford. A Parsee and daughter of a converted Christian, Cornelia was among the early Indian women to practice at the Calcutta High Court. Appointed to a senior office under the British Indian government, she championed the cause of opening up the legal profession to women much before they were formally allowed to plead before the courts of law. Her story as a pioneer remains largely untold till date. Characterized by conservatism, individualism, and feelings against Indian nationalism, Cornelia was one of the early woman legal professionals in India who played a pivotal role in protecting the interests of the purdahnashins. Less

Early Feminists of Colonial India: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Bharati Ray

This book is a story of two outstanding Bengali women fighting for a cause, so similar and yet so strikingly different at multiple levels. It presents a historical evaluation of Sarala ... More

This book is a story of two outstanding Bengali women fighting for a cause, so similar and yet so strikingly different at multiple levels. It presents a historical evaluation of Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. It specifically determines the similarities and differences in the ideas and activities of these women from two different communities in colonial Bengal, Hindu-Brahmo and Muslim, and thus also sheds some light on contemporary Hindu and Muslim societies, their patterns of change during the colonial encounter, and the emergence among both the communities of a new generation of women. It concentrates on their concern and work around women’s issues. It first introduces the lives of Sarala and Rokeya. It then investigates the steps Sarala and Rokeya advocated or adopted to enhance the lives of women. It concludes by addressing how their contemporaries viewed Sarala and Rokeya, and how are they regarded today. Less

Empire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman: A Feminist Critique of Postcolonial Thought

Esha Niyogi De

Drawing lessons from the intersection of literature, photography, cinema, television, dance-drama, and ethnography, this book presents a unique analysis of Indian activist thought spread ... More

Drawing lessons from the intersection of literature, photography, cinema, television, dance-drama, and ethnography, this book presents a unique analysis of Indian activist thought spread over two centuries. It discusses two presuppositions of liberal individualism: personal autonomy and ethical autonomy. Besides, it argues that the ‘individual’ has been creatively indigenized in modern non-Western cultures: thinkers attentive to gender in postcolonial cultures embrace selected ethical premises of the Enlightenment and its human rights discourse while they refuse possessive individualism. Debating influential schools of postcolonial and transnational studies, the chapter provides radical argument through a rich tapestry of gender portrayals drawn from two moments of modern Indian thought: the rise of humanism in the colony and the growth of new individualism in contemporary liberalized India. From autobiographical texts by nineteenth century Bengali prostitutes, point-of-view photography, as well as women-centred dance-dramas and essays by Rabindranath Tagore to representation of Tagore's works on mainstream television, video, and stage; feminist cinema, choreography and performance by Aparna Sen and Manjusri Chaki-Sircar respectively—the book makes use of such and much more to creatively engage with empire, media, and gender. Less

Giving Women: Alliance and Exchange in Victorian Culture

Jill Rappoport

Altruism and self-assertiveness went hand in hand for Victorian women. During a period when most lacked property rights and professional opportunities, gift transactions allowed them to ... More

Altruism and self-assertiveness went hand in hand for Victorian women. During a period when most lacked property rights and professional opportunities, gift transactions allowed them to enter into economic negotiations of power as volatile and potentially profitable as those within the market systems that so frequently excluded or exploited them. They made presents of holiday books and homemade jams, transformed inheritances into intimate and aggressive bequests, and, in both prose and practice, offered up their own bodies in sacrifice. Far more than selfless acts of charity or sure signs of their suitability for marriage, such gifts radically reconstructed women’s personal relationships and public activism in the nineteenth century. Giving Women examines the literary expression and cultural consequences of English women’s giving from the 1820s to World War I. Attending to the dynamic action and reaction of gift exchange in fiction and poetry by Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Christina Rossetti as well as in literary annuals, Salvation Army periodicals, and political pamphlets, Rappoport demonstrates how female authors and fictional protagonists alike mobilized networks outside marriage and the market. Through giving, women redefined the primary allegiances of their everyday lives, forged public coalitions, and advanced campaigns for abolition, slum reform, eugenics, and suffrage. Less

Gossip, Letters, Phones: The Scandal of Female Networks in Film and Literature

Ned Schantz

For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and ... More

For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and twisted is the anxious reaction. But behind this broad anxiety lurks a powerful ideal of sympathetic and strategic female networks, an ideal that takes its intimate shape from the expectations of communications media, and that underwrites the very culture that would deny it. The book examines novelistic culture from the British novel to Hollywood film as a series of responses to the threat and promise of female networks. In texts from Clarissa, Emma, and The Portrait of a Lady to Sorry, Wrong Number, Vertigo, and You’ve Got Mail, it argues that a recurring gothic nightmare haunts plots of courtship and marriage, and that the concept of female networks illuminates the exits, for culture and criticism alike. And while this study must of necessity visit an uncanny realm of lost messages and false suitors, telepathy and artificial intelligence, locked rooms and time-traveling stalkers, these occult concerns only confirm the power at stake in the most basic modes of female communication, in gossip, letters, and phones. Less

Inside India

Halidé Edib

Mushirul Hasan (ed.)

First published in 1937, this book presents the author's personal account of India. The author, a Turkish writer and novelist, visited the region in 1935 and gained insights into the ... More

First published in 1937, this book presents the author's personal account of India. The author, a Turkish writer and novelist, visited the region in 1935 and gained insights into the history and sociology of the country. Based on her experiences, Halide Edib documents significant contemporary events which shaped the history of India at the time, including the Hindu-Muslim separatism and the freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. Her work is by far the most eloquent account of Indian society and politics in the 1930s. Here she details her travel to several regions such as Aligarh, Lahore, Calcutta, Peshawar, Lucknow, Bombay, and Hyderabad, as well as her meetings with many people from different walks of life. She takes a look at Indian nationalism, identifies its strengths and weaknesses, describes its encounters with colonialism, and analyses the rising tide of Muslim nationalism. With scholarly finesse, she reveals the Indian personality of Muslims in India and shows a favourable disposition towards the perspective of the Congress Muslims. Less

Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature

Lesel Dawson

The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive ... More

The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound up in wider historical narratives about bodies and interiority. In early modern medical texts, intense unfulfilled erotic desire is held to be a real and virulent disease: it is classified as a species of melancholy, with physical aetiologies and cures. This book analyses literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. It considers the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and green sickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. It also examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy, inverting much of the medical advice for what is held to be healthy in romantic love and promoting a different hierarchical relationship between the sexes. Finally, this study considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness, illuminating ideas about masculinity as well as some of the psychic contradictions of erotic desire. Authors considered include: Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and William Davenant. Less