Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 19:59:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: New book--POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND THE UNITED STATES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LITERATURE



From: Steven B. Yates <syates-AT-ihl.state.ms.us>

I wanted to make sure that you knew of our new release POSTCOLONIAL
THEORY AND THE UNITED STATES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LITERATURE. Books
will be available in stores this month. I've attached a news release
below. If you know of others who would appreciate news of this book,
please feel free to pass the release along. If you have any questions,
drop me an e-mail at syates-AT-ihl.state.ms.us.

Thanks for taking a look at the release.

Cordially,
Steve Yates
University Press of Mississippi




POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND THE UNITED STATES
RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LITERATURE
University Press of Mississippi
ISBN 1-57806-251-9, unjacketed hardback, $50.00
ISBN 1-57806-252-7, paper, $26.00
Book News for immediate release

Essayists see convergence in studies of United States' and Postcolonial
literatures

Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt see an exciting convergence in
scholarship--the study of American literature mingling with the study of
global, postcolonial literature.

In the new anthology they edited, POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND THE UNITED
STATES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LITERATURE (University Press of
Mississippi), Singh and Schmidt note that great waves of change have
swept the globe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Slavery
crested and was abolished; America and Haiti underwent revolutions;
Freedom Movements gained independence for India and African nations; the
Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements transformed America; and
South Africa ended apartheid.

"The U.S. had been involved in almost all of these world shaping
events," the editors write, "both as the oldest self conscious democracy
and the youngest ‘superpower' with a sense of its own ‘manifest
destiny.'"

This involvement and the flow of immigrant experience into U.S. culture
has changed the way America defines itself and the way its cultural
history is taught. "As we enter the twenty-first century, in response to
such developments some older ways of reading and teaching U.S.
literature and cultural history are being supplemented by new ones."

With this flux in mind, Singh and Schmidt began organizing POSTCOLONIAL
THEORY AND THE UNITED STATES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LITERATURE, nineteen
probing essays written by both well established and up-and-coming
scholars. Each essay examines critical issues surrounding the United
States's ever-expanding international cultural identity in the
postcolonial era.

"Studies addressing issues of race, ethnicity and empire in U.S. culture
have provided some of the most innovative--and
controversial--contributions to recent scholarship," Singh and Schmidt
write, "and much of this research has been enabled by a spirited
dialogue with what is now called "postcolonial" theory."

In choosing essays, the editors say they looked for work that would be
accessible, well-focused resources for college and university students
and their teachers, displaying both historical depth and theoretical
finesse as they make close and lively readings.

Amritjit Singh, a professor of English and African American studies at
Rhode Island College, is coeditor of CONVERSATIONS WITH RALPH ELLISON
and CONVERSATIONS WITH ISHMAEL REED (both from University Press of
Mississippi). Peter Schmidt, a professor of English at Swarthmore
College, is the author of THE HEART OF THE STORY: EDUDORA WELTY'S SHORT
FICTION  (University Press of Mississippi).

# # #

For more information, contact Steven B. Yates, Promotions Manager,
syates-AT-ihl.state.ms.us, or 601.432.6459.



Contributors to

Postcolonial Theory and the United States
Race, Ethnicity, and Literature

Edited by Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt

Lawrence Buell is John P. Marquand Professor of English of Harvard
University.  His current project-in-progress is a book focusing on
post-civil War literary and cultural discourses, including conflicting
postcolonial formations.

Rhonda Cobham is an Associate Professor of English at Amherst College.
She has published articles on Nuruddin Farah, Ismith Khan, modern
Nigerian fiction, and the Jamaican Sistren collective.

Juan Flores is Professor in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican
Studies and also Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at
Hunter College, CUNY.  His newest book is FROM BOMBA TO HIP HOP: POPULAR
CULTURE AND PUERTO RICAN/LATINO IDENTITY (Columbia University Press,
2000).

Mae G. Henderson teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill.  Her most recent publication is THE STORIES OF O(DESSA): STORIES
OF COMPLICITY AND RESISTANCE (University of California Press, 1997).

Anne Fleischmann is a lecturer in English at the University of
California, Davis.  Her current project is a study of the intersections
of race and region in late nineteenth-century American fiction.

Amy Kaplan teaches English and American Studies at Mt. Holyoke College.
She is currently completing AT HOME ABROAD: THE LIMITS OF EMPIRE IN
AMERICAN CULTURE (Harvard UP, forthcoming).

Maureen Konkle is Assistant Professor of English at the University of
Missouri, Columbia.  She is currently working on a book manuscript,
"Writing Indian Nations: The Emergence of Native Writing in English,
1750-1860."

Arnold Krupat teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.  His most recent
writing is "America's Histories," which can be found in AMERICAN
LITERARY HISTORY, 1998.

Jana Sequoya Magdaleno is the author of a number of articles on Native
American literatures and cultures, including "Telling the Difference:
Representations of Identity in the Discourse of Indianness" in THE
ETHNIC CANON: HISTORIES, INSTITUSTIONS, AND INTERVENTIONS (U of
Minnesota P, 1995).

Lisa Suhair Majaj was a Visiting Scholar in Women's Studies at
Northeastern University for 1998-99.  Her collection THE POLITICS OF
RECEPTION: GLOBALIZING THIRD WORLD WOMEN'S TEXTS, co-edited with Amal
Amireh, is forthcoming from Garland Publishing.

Kenneth Mostern is Assistant Professor of English at the University of
Tennessee.  He is now working on a book on W. E. B. Du Bois and
contemporary critical theory.

Rafael Pérez-Torres is an associate professor of English at UCLA.  His
current project is a book-length study of the relationship between
ethics and the aesthetics of Chicano fiction.

Inés Salazar is currently completing a book that examines the was in
which the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the
dramatic shifts in the terms of gendered and ethnic identity they
produced inform the contemporary literary practice of many
African-American women and Chicanas.

Lavina Dhingra Shankar teaches English at Bates College, in Maine.  She
is working on two book-length projects— oral narratives of early Indian
American immigrants and an analysis of the cultural production and
racial construction of Uday Shankar's dance-dramas in the U.S. and the
U.K. from 1920-1970.

Rajini Srikanth teaches in the English Department at the University of
Massachusetts Boston.  She is currently co-editing a literary collection
titled "White Women in Racialized Spaces."

Bruce Simon is an assistant professor of English at SUNY Fredonia.  He
is completing a book manuscript entitled "American Studies and the Race
for Hawthorne."

Leny Mendoza Strobel teaches at Sonoma State University in the Hutchins
School of Liberal Studies and American Multicultural Studies
Department.  With Rajini Srikanth, she is co-editor of GEOGRAPHY OF
ENCOUNTERS: PEOPLE OF ASIAN DESCENT IN THE AMERICAS (Rowman and
Littlefield, 1999).

Carla L. Peterson teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park.
She is the author of "DOERS OF THE WORD": THEORIZING AFRICAN AMERICAN
WOMEN WRITERS IN THE ANTEBELLUM NORTH (Oxford UP, 1995).

Sau-ling C. Wong is Professor of Asian American Studies and Ethnic
Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California,
Berkeley.  She is co-editor of A RESOURCE GUIDE TO ASIAN AMERICAN
LITERATURE (Modern Language Association, forthcoming).

Amritjit Singh, Professor of English at Rhode Island College, has
recently edited reprint editions of THE COLOR  and BLACK POWER by
Richard Wright.

Peter Schmidt teaches U.S. literature and history at Swarthmore
College.  He is now working on Briar Patch: Migration and Return in
Southern U.S. Fiction, a literary history that incorporates some current
postcolonial and diaspora theory.



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