Collection of Essays: British Asian Fiction: Framing the Contemporary

The primary focus of this proposed collection is a multi-faceted
analysis of contemporary British-Asian fiction that will focus on
individual novels by the authors listed below.

The collection seeks to demonstrate in situ the virtues of commentary
that engages substantially rather than tangentially with fictional
works. Whatever one's views about the stress on discourses of alterity
in contemporary criticism (culture, gender, sex, class), these critical
projects are not furthered by analyses which sideline the structural and
aesthetic make-up of fictional works, with the result that widely
divergent texts are homogenized by a ready-made critical apparatus.

Ultimately the collection seeks not so much to enter headlong into the
already fraught and frayed academic debate about the opposing merits of
social (cultural) or formal (aesthetic) modes of analysis. Instead
these essays will focus on how text (in a formal and artistic sense)
intersects with context (in all its possible expressions), providing a
more balanced understanding of the exigencies - cultural, aesthetic and
otherwise - attending cosmopolitan authorship as well as its
metropolitan reception. Other analytical possibilities foreclosed by
recent discussion will also be explored, including metafictional and
other "postmodern" narrative strategies employed by certain authors and
how such strategies have implications for the construction of, or
possibility of, meaning, social or otherwise.

By "British Asian," the editors mean authors of Asian birth or descent
who have made a considerable contribution to the literature of
Britain/England, to the extent that it can no longer be spoken of
without continual reference to the living, influential presence of its
Asian voices (hence the de-hyphenation of the term British Asian).

We invite essay proposals (300 words) that consider one specific,
representative novel by any of the following authors:

* Tariq Ali
* Monica Ali
* Nadeem Aslam
* Romesh Gunesekera
* Sunetra Gupta
* Hari Kunzru
* Atima Srivastava
* Meera Syal

*We are open to additional suggestions for essays responding to the work
of British Asian novelists.

**We have already requested guest contributions for work on Salman
Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Ooi Yang-May and Timothy Mo,
but we remain open to considering adventurous approaches to the work of
these authors.

Proposals can be sent via e-mail or airmail but should reach us before
July 1st 2005
Editors:

Asst Prof Neil Murphy, Dept of English literature, School of Humanities
and Social Sciences, NTU, Singapore 639 798; camurphy_at_ntu.edu.sg
Asst Prof Sim Wai Chew, Dept of English language and literature, NIE,
Singapore 637616; wcsim_at_nie.edu.sg
The editors have already signed a publishing contract with an
international publisher for this collection.

Neil Murphy,
Deputy Head,
Division of English,
School of Humanities & Social Sciences
NTU, Singapore
Tel: 65 - 67906746
Fax: 65 - 6794 6303
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/camurphy/nm.htm

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Sun Apr 24 2005 - 11:04:36 EDT