Crossing Borders

Essays on Literature, Culture, and Society in Honor of Amritjit Singh

Contributions by Elleke Boehmer, Martha J. Cutter, Thadious M. Davis, Robin E. Field, Rahul K. Gairola, Fred Gardaphe, Nibir K. Ghosh, Ayesha Hardison, Nalini Iyer, Jasbir Jain, Zubeda Jalalzai, Charles Johnson, Auritro Majumder, Lynda Ng, Arnold Rampersad, Catherine Rottenberg, Peter Schmidt, Silvia Schultermandl, Amritjit Singh, Werner Sollors, Robert B. Stepto, Cheryl A. Wall Edited by Tapan Basu, Tasneem Shahnaaz

Not available to order

Publication date:

04 May 2017

Length of book:

376 pages

Publisher

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611479003

Crossing Borders is a gathering of twenty original, interdisciplinary essays on the paradigm of borders in African American literature, multi-ethnic U.S. studies, and South Asian studies. These essays by established and mid-career scholars from around the globe employ a variety of approaches to the idea of “border crossings” and represent important contributions to the discourses on modernity, diasporic mobility, populism, migration, exile, sub-nation, trans-nation, as well as the formation of nationalities, communities, and identities. Borders, in these contexts, signify social and national inequities and hierarchies and also the ways to challenge and transgress entrenched barriers sanctioned by habit, custom, and law. The volume also honors and celebrates the life and work of Amritjit Singh as a teacher, mentor, author, scholar, and editor over half a century.

Preface
Introduction
Tapan Basu and Tasneem Shahnaaz

Part I: Multiculturalism and Its Discontents
1 Out of Line: Shifting Border Paradigms in Cooper, Morrison, and Yamashita
Silvia Schultermandl
2 Wave or Particle?: Crossing Borders in Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being (2013)
Peter Schmidt
3 Translating across the Borders: Sui Sin Far and Other Interethnic/Interstitial Asian American Subjects
Martha J. Cutter
4 Dancing with Italians: Chicago’s Italians in Fact, and in the Fiction of Willard Motley
Fred Gardaphe

Part II: Nation and Sub-Nation
5 Creating Kashmir: Gender, Politics, and Violence in Meena Arora Nayak’s Endless Rain
Robin E. Field
6 Drawing the Durand Line: Pakistani Afghans, Borders, and Transnational Insecurity
Zubeda Jalalzai
7 Teaching Giovanni’s Room in the Shadow of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Denaturalizing Privilege
Catherine Rottenberg

Part III: Diaspora and Trans-Nation
8 Diasporic Subjectivity: Dhan Gopal Mukerji’s Caste and Outcast and Sadhu Singh Dhami’s Maluka
Nalini Iyer
9 A Partition without Borders: Diasporic Readings of Clear Light of Day and Train to Pakistan
Rahul K. Gairola
10 Caste, Race, and Intellectual History: Notes on a Singular Modernity
Auritro Majumder

Part IV: Gendered Identities
11 Jessie Fauset and the Historiography of the Harlem Renaissance
Cheryl A. Wall
12 Space and the Shape of a Life: Placing Nella Larsen
Thadious M. Davis
13 The Sexual Commodities, Racial Economies, and Critical Oversights of Felice Swados’s House of Fury
Ayesha K. Hardison

Part V: Art: Between the Popular and the Populist
14 Langston Hughes and the Challenges of Populist Art
Arnold Rampersad
15 Orality, History, and Narration: The Aesthetics of Listening
Jasbir Jain
16 Romare Bearden’s Li’l Dan the Drummer Boy: Coloring a Story of the Civil War
Robert B. Stepto

Part VI: Journeys across Art and Life
17 “Heritage” in America: A Literary Stroll
Werner Sollors
18 What Is Ralph Ellison All About?: A Retrospective View
Charles Johnson
19 Writing across Borders: Race and Gender in Elleke Boehmer’s Fiction
Lynda Ng
20 A Native Son Abroad: A Conversation with Amritjit Singh
Nibir K. Ghosh

Epilogue: Amritjit Singh: Reflections and Stories
Rajiva Verma, Ved Prakash, Houston A. Baker, Roshni
Rustomji-Kerns, K. D. Verma, David Ray, Judy Ray, Meena
Alexander, J. N. Sharma, Sachidananda Mohanty, Pradyumna
S. Chauhan, Malashri Lal, Sudhi Rajiv, Tapan Basu, Daniel M.
Scott, Joseph A. Conforti, Richard Olmstead, Barbara A.
Silliman, Zubeda Jalalzai, Gert Buelens, Robert Elliot Fox,
Bruce Dick, C. Lok Chua, Wendy Barker, Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni, John C. Hawley, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Samina
Najmi, Rajini Srikanth, Nita N. Kumar, Altaf Ullah Khan,
Marsha L. Dutton, Vladimir Marchenkov, Richard A. Courage,
Heba Sharobeem and Ira Dworkin

Index
About the Editors and Contributors

Amritjit Singh is a respected scholar, teacher, and friend. This fine collection of essays is a tribute to Amrit’s personal courage and intellectual willingness to transgress borders and establish a common humanity with people everywhere. These are important attributes in our times when people want to assert their differences than seek a conversation which is always inconclusive. Maybe the question King Vikramaditya asks in an ancient text of moral riddles best describes Amrit’s life-history: “What country is foreign to the learned?”