Transcultural Localisms

This volume presents original research from the 4th MESEA conference, 'Ethnic Communities in Democratic Societies," May 2004, Thessaloniki, Greece. The original title was replaced by the current one as the present volume took shape. The new title, 'Transcultural Localisms," focuses on the common thread running through the sixteen essays of the volume: in the twenty-first century, flows of culture, capital and labor cannot curb the resurgence of local resistances that contest global dynamics. Today's global culture cannot integrate everything; rather, its terrain is open to challenge and its borders are constantly in flux. If anything, local resistances appropriate elements they find useful from that same global culture which they are forced to accept. As a result, their own projects of cultural, economic and political survival are expedited. The essays collected in this volume emphasize the potential of the local to challenge rather than submit, and to defy those discourses which protect the interests of institutional control, thereby creating possibilities for alternative discourses. Table of Contents: Yiorgos Kalogeras, Eleftheria Arapoglou, Linda J. Manney: I Anti-Essentialist Configurations Pin-chia Feng: Transcontinental Writing: Reconfiguring the Politics of Home in Maryse Condé's The Last of the African Kings Gary Y. Okihiro: Toward a Pacific Civilization Elke Sturm Trigonakis: Global Playing in Poetry: The Texts of Juan Felipe Herrera and José A. Oliver as a New Weltliteratur II Western Political Unilateralism and Local History Chris LaLonde: Place, Displacement, and a Pathway Home in Kimberly Blaeser's Poetry Linda J. Manney: Soliloquy, Story, and Song: Language as a Social Practice and Social Change Kaeko Mochizuki: Duras, Ibuse and Silko: Narrating Nuclear Destruction in Atomic Societies John Purdy: Drawing the Line: Native American Fiction and National Identities III Auto-ethnography and Self-invention Mita Banerjee: Skunk's Gall Bladders in Gin: Normalizing Chinatown in Denise Chong's The Concubine's Children Sophia Emmanouilidou: Mythography and the Reconstitution of Chicano Identity in Rudolfo Anaya's The Legend of La Llorona (1984) Sidonie Smith: Narrated Lives and the Contemporary Regime of Human Rights: Mobilizing Stories, Campaigns, Ethnicities IV Cultural Incommensurability and Hybridity Pirjo Ahokas: Constructing a Transnational, Postmodern Female Identity in Bharati Mukherjee's Desirable Daughters and Monica Ali's Brick Lane Anjoom Mukadam and Sharmina Mawani: Nizari Ismailis in the West: Negotiating National, Religious and Ethnic Identity Ilana Xinos: Narrating Captivity and Identity: Christophorus Castanis' The Greek Exile and the Genesis of the Greek American V The Challenges of Ethnic Incorporation Stefano Luconi: Italian-American Historiography and the Search for a Usable Past Stepanka Korytova-Magstadt: The Elite, the Peasants, and Woodrow Wilson: American Slovaks and their Homeland 1914-1918 Hale Yilmaz: Constructing a New Laz Identity in Turkey and its Future Prospects Contributors and Editors