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Last Updated Apr 3, 2024
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Featured Resources
The Boston Chinatown Atlas is a collaborative project that documents and explores Chinatown’s growth and change through time as told by personal stories, photos, maps, and interactive features on the website.
Online Books
Emergent U. S. Literatures: From Multiculturalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Late Twentieth Century by Cyrus PatellEmergent U.S. Literatures introduces readers to the foundational writers and texts produced by four literary traditions associated with late-twentieth-century US multiculturalism. Examining writing by Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and gay and lesbian Americans after 1968, Cyrus R. K. Patell compares and historicizes what might be characterized as the minority literatures within "U.S. minority literature." Drawing on recent theories of cosmopolitanism, Patell presents methods for mapping the overlapping concerns of the texts and authors of these literatures during the late twentieth century. He discusses the ways in which literary marginalization and cultural hybridity combine to create the grounds for literature that is truly "emergent" in Raymond Williams's sense of the term--literature that produces "new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships" in tension with the dominant, mainstream culture of the United States. By enabling us to see the American literary canon through the prism of hybrid identities and cultures, these texts require us to reevaluate what it means to write (and read) in the American grain. Emergent U.S. Literatures gives readers a sense of how these foundational texts work as aesthetic objects--rather than merely as sociological documents--crafted in dialogue with the canonical tradition of so-called "American Literature," as it existed in the late twentieth century, as well as in dialogue with each other.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2014
Cities of Others: Reimagining Urban Spaces in Asian American Literature by Xiaojing ZhouAsian American literature abounds with complex depictions of American cities as spaces that reinforce racial segregation and prevent interactions across boundaries of race, culture, class, and gender. However, in Cities of Others, Xiaojing Zhou uncovers a much different narrative, providing the most comprehensive examination to date of how Asian American writers - both celebrated and overlooked - depict urban settings. Zhou goes beyond examining popular portrayals of Chinatowns by paying equal attention to life in other parts of the city. Her innovative and wide-ranging approach sheds new light on the works of Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese American writers who bear witness to a variety of urban experiences and reimagine the American city as other than a segregated nation-space. Drawing on critical theories on space from urban geography, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies, Zhou shows how spatial organization shapes identity in the works of Sui Sin Far, Bienvenido Santos, Meena Alexander, Frank Chin, Chang-rae Lee, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others. She also shows how the everyday practices of Asian American communities challenge racial segregation, reshape urban spaces, and redefine the identity of the American city. From a reimagining of the nineteenth-century flaneur figure in an Asian American context to providing a framework that allows readers to see ethnic enclaves and American cities as mutually constitutive and transformative, Zhou gives us a provocative new way to understand some of the most important works of Asian American literature.
Call Number: Mugar Stacks PS153.A84 Z25 2014 and Online
Publication Date: 2014
Buenas Noches, American Culture: Latina/o Aesthetics of Night by María DeGuzmán; María DeGuzmánOften treated like night itself--both visible and invisible, feared and romanticized--Latina/os make up the largest minority group in the US. In her newest work, María DeGuzmán explores representations of night in art and literature from the Caribbean, Colombia, Central and South America, and the US, calling into question night's effect on the formation of identity for Latina/os in and outside of the US. She takes as her subject novels, short stories, poetry, essays, non-fiction, photo-fictions, photography, and film, and examines these texts through the lenses of nationhood, sexuality, human rights, exoticism, among others.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2012
Transcultural Identities in Contemporary Literature by Irene Gilsenan Nordin (Volume Editor); Julie Hansen (Volume Editor); Carmen Zamorano Llena (Volume Editor)In recent decades, globalization has led to increased mobility and interconnectedness. For a growing number of people, contemporary life entails new local and transnational interdependencies which transform individual and collective allegiances. Contemporary literature often reflects these changes through its exploration of migrant experiences and transcultural identities. Calling into question traditional definitions of culture, many recent works of poetry and prose fiction go beyond the spatial boundaries of a given state, emphasizing instead the mixing and collision of languages, cultures, and identities. In doing so, they also challenge recent and contemporary discourses about cultural identities, fostering a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of identity-formation processes in diverse transcultural frameworks.This volume analyses how traditional understandings of culture, as well as literary representations of identity constructs, can be reconceptualized from a transcultural perspective. In four thematic sections focusing on migration, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and literary translingualism, the twelve essays included in this volume explore various facets of transculturality in contemporary poetry and fiction from around the world.Contributors: Malin Lidström Brock, Katherina Dodou, Pilar Cuder-Domínguez, Stefan Helgesson, Christoph Houswitschka, Carly McLaughlin, Kristin Rebien, J.B. Rollins, Karen L. Ryan, Eric Sellin, Mats Tegmark, Carmen Zamorano Llena.Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Professor of English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden. She is founder and director of DUCIS (Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies) and leads Dalarna University's Transcultural Identities research group. Julie Hansen is Research Fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies and teaches Russian literature in the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University, Sweden. Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English Literature at Dalarna University, Sweden, and member of Dalarna University's Transcultural Identities research group.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2013
Mobile Narratives: Travel, Migration, and Transculturation by Eleftheria Arapoglou (Editor); Mónika Fodor (Editor); Jopi Nyman (Editor)Emphasizing the role of travel and migration in the performance and transformation of identity, this volume addresses representations of travel, mobility, and migration in 19th¿21st-century travel writing, literature, and media texts. In so doing, the book analyses the role of the various cultural, ethnic, gender, and national encounters pertinent to narratives of travel and migration in transforming and problematizing the identities of both the travelers and "travelees" enacting in the borderzones between cultures. While the individual essays by scholars from a wide range of countries deal with a variety of case studies from various historical, spatial, and cultural locations, they share a strong central interest in the ways in which the narratives of travel contribute to the imagining of ethnic encounters and how they have acted as sites of transformation and transculturation from the early nineteenth century to the present day. In addition to discussing textual representations of travel and migration, the volume also addresses the ways in which cultural texts themselves travel and are reconstructed in various cultural settings. The analyses are particularly attentive to the issues of globalization and migration, which provide a general frame for interpretation. What distinguishes the volume from existing books is its concern with travel and migration as ways of forging transcultural identities that are able to subvert existing categorizations and binary models of identity formation. In so doing, it pays particular attention to the performance of identity in various spaces of cultural encounter, ranging from North America to the East of Europe, putting particular emphasis on the representation of intercultural and ethnic encounters.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2013
Selected Films
Vargas, Jose Antonio. Documented. Bond/360, 2013.In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in the New York Times Magazine. Documented chronicles his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his public struggle as an immigration reform activist/provocateur; and his journey inward as he reconnects with his mother, whom he hasn't seen in 20 years. A broken immigration system leads to broken families and broken lives.
Jamison, Gayla, and Metzger, Janet. Living in America : a Hundred Years of Ybor City. Filmakers Library, 1989.This film celebrates the long and rich tradition of Latin culture in this country in its vivid portrayal of Ybor City, Florida. This multicultural community was founded in the 1880s, when Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants arrived to work in the thriving cigar factories. It flourished until World War II when the effects of assimilation, urban renewal and the decline in the cigar industry led to its demise. The film captures the colors, rhythms, and texture of this close-knit, ethnic enclave. Here people played dominoes over a cup of cafe con leche, socialized at the dance clubs, and took pride in a perfect, hand-rolled cigar. Although they experienced hard times and discrimination, they always had a protective community to fall back on.
Mallozzi, Julie. Monkey Dance (Director's Version). Berkeley Media, 2005.This extraordinary documentary provides an illuminating and richly discussible case study of immigrant acculturation in contemporary America. With keen sensitivity to detail and a sharp eye and ear for nuance, the film explores the lives of three teenagers as they come of age in Lowell, Massachusetts. Children of Cambodian refugees, the three teens inhabit a gritty blue-collar American world that is indelibly colored by their parents' nightmares of the Khmer Rouge. Traditional Cambodian dance links each of them to their parents' culture, but fast cars, hip consumerism, and young romance pull them even harder into American popular culture.
Nelson, Melanie, and Zimmern, Andrew. A Tour of Ethnic Food Stores. Learning Zone Express, 2002.Featuring Andrew Zimmeran, this video visits Hispanic, Italian, and Chinese grocery stores and shows how ethnic food markets reflect the history and culture of many countries. It discusses the ingredients that are basic and unique to each culture and explains how the food guide pyramid applies to ethnic foods.
From Bhagat Singh Thind to Miss America: South Asian Immigrant Experiences in the U.S. Microtraining Associates, 2014.Understanding the histories of immigrants is critical to appreciating their lived experiences. This presentation highlights the socio-political and historical legacies that have shaped the South Asian immigrant experience in the U.S. From the late 1700's to 2014, Dr. Inman elucidates the immigrant policies and practices that influenced the opportunities, behaviors, and identities of South Asian immigrants.
Chang, Anita. One Hundred Eggs a Minute. A. W. Chang Productions, 1996.One Hundred Eggs a Minute is an experimental documentary film about the reflections of a second-generation Chinese-American woman who grew up working in her family’s fortune cookie factory in San Francisco from ages 5 to 23. This is a film about one immigrant family’s means of survival, as much as it is a story about work, filial piety, sacrifice and the meaning of choice.