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This essay shows how literary parataxis serves as an engine of transnational thought in the nineteenth-century North American West. I focus, in particular, on how Mark Twain's Roughing It (1872) and Sarah Winnemucca's Life Among the Piutes (1883) employ paratactic forms to present the Great Basin as a space where no single nation rules as sovereign. Amidst US settler colonialism, I argue, such paratactic aesthetics prove politically double-edged. While parataxis' tendency to destabilize hierarchies allows the form to undermine US claims to sovereignty, the same deconstructive proclivity can occlude Indigenous political distinction and historical priority. Twain and Winnemucca respond to this aesthetic scenario differently, and their writing, consequently, presents competing conceptions of transnationalism. Twain's unchecked embrace of paratactic forms yields a transnational vision whose emphasis on social movement and mixture proves antithetical to Indigenous sovereignty. Winnemucca, by contrast, employs a modulated parataxis in order to locate the transnational in collisions of countervailing polities and thereby better represents the political standing and agency of the Paiute people. Winnemucca's accounts of her work as a translator, I further argue, suggest that amidst such collisions, political sovereignty takes a distinctive shape, as a relational and comparative project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the literary representations of the 'unsaid' and intangible connections of humanity across cultures as represented in Undisciplined Heart (2010), the memoir of the Namibian writer Jane Katjavivi. The central concerns are to examine how the author, through the act of writing, ascertains a new female identity within a culturally transforming Africa; how the fictionalization of her life is a revolutionary way of abdicating the role of silent white-female spectator in Africa; and how her story is a voice that matters in as much as it demonstrates the salient cultural relatedness and connectedness in Africa. The issues and concerns around transnational families, transculturalism, female subjectivity, agency, transnationality and multiculturalism are therefore central in this article. The guiding principles of this essay are Ubuntu (ubuntuism) and Afro-transnationalism in order to explore the sense of 'rainbowism' as articulated within a transnational, multiracial and multicultural literary text, Undisciplined Heart. The article brings to the fore the often overlooked presence of 'white' writing in postcolonial and post-independence Africa and provides some nuanced insights into the racial and cultural patterns of connectedness – the harmonious cross-cultural sense of being in an Africa that is both culturally and spatially diverse. The article also interrogates as well as problematizes the elusive and constantly changing issues of identity and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her debut novel, Zebra Crossing , Meg Vandermerwe privileges the voice of Chipo Nyamubaya, an albino girl from Zimbabwe, to capture the gripping and tragic experiences of African immigrants in South Africa. This article problematizes the notion of minor transnational identities by interrogating the relationships between South Africans and those they refer to as outsiders, and the relationship between the African immigrants themselves vis-à-vis culturally held beliefs about albinos and LGBTs. In the process, we demonstrate the patterns of the idea of Otherness brought about by racism, xenophobia, homophobic prejudice and insensitive discrimination. The article reveals how Othering debunks the ideology of African connectedness by bringing out the apparent contradictions in the values of Ubuntu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, the notion of home has permeated disciplinary, inter- and cross-disciplinary enquiries into the human condition. In recent years, ideas, constructions and perceptions of 'homes' have been further complicated by constant shifts in conceptions and practices of transnational mobilities that have informed and disrupted ways of seeing, making and re-making homes at home and away from 'home'. In this article, we draw from Sara Ahmed's idea of home as 'a space within us' to read the novel We Need New Names (2013) by the transnational Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo as a text that interrogates the intertwined and complicated relationship between home, transnational identity and belonging. Focusing on the protagonist's experiences in both Zimbabwe and America, this article examines the idea of home as it refracts uniquely twenty-first-century experiences, perceptions and notions of transnational spaces, and shapes certain notions of identity, transnationality and belonging in We Need New Names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why do diplomatic activities by sub-state units produce conflict with the central government? To answer this question, scholars have focused on multinational states in which at least one administrative unit—Catalonia, for instance—has an identity that is different from the rest of the country. Such noncentral governments (NCGs), the argument goes, are more likely to engage in uncoordinated bypassing activities and in the international projection of their specific identity in a manner that antagonizes central decision makers. That is especially the case if local elites are dissatisfied with the amount of local autonomy and the institutional tools available for identity protection. This article uses insights from the ethnic conflict and nationalism literature to advance sub-state diplomacy scholarship by adding a transnational dimension to the analysis. Three illustrative case studies—France-Canada-Quebec, Austria-Italy–South Tyrol, and Sweden-Finland–the Åland Islands—reveal that kin states can play a variety of roles in the triangular relationship with the kin NCG and the host state and can either exacerbate or dampen conflictual paradiplomacy. More broadly, the article is an effort to conceptualize the role of sovereign states in sub-state diplomacy. Video Abstract Video Abstract Close [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Romanian Jewish authors of Francophone avant-garde literature in the interwar period, focusing on contributors to the journal "unu" by poet Ilarie Voronca, and the writings by authors Tristan Tzara and Isidore Isou. Topics include literary transnationalism, cross-culturalism, Dadaism, Integralism, and Lettrism.

To modern scholars the reasons why Roland is a symbol of French nationalism may seem evident. Having died in combat against the Unfaithful while defending Charlemagne and his men, Roland's death-story seems particularly symbolic of French patriotism. This article investigates how different scholars approached La chanson de Roland in the nineteenth century, having to come to terms with religious, political and moral issues in their analysis and depiction of Roland's actions and death. At a time when political tendencies and scholarly work allegedly came together, an examination of scholarly editions of, and academic writings on, La chanson de Roland helps to re-evaluate the role of politics in nineteenth-century scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines literature produced by the colonial Americas. The author talks about the historiography of this subject and how this literature contributed to the later national culture of the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. The author argues against this, stating that it wrongfully examines this literature as the literature of British America. The author states that this literature contained geographical and cultural areas outside of Puritan New England. Subjects of the article also include the "hemispheric" approach to studying early American literature, colonial literatures not originally written in English, and transnational American studies.

An essay is presented on the impacts of foreign threat on the formation of indian and chinese nationalism. It elaborates the different forms of nationalism which has influenced the two countries by presenting three independent variables. It mentions the potential triggers for mass nationalist movements and increased foreign threat for both China state nationalism and India's ethnic nationalism. It also notes on the divergent manifestations of nationalism for both countries.

Discusses Edgar Allan Poe's resistance to literary nationalism, his ridicule of its fundamental assumptions, and his apparent capitulation to the clamor for American themes during his most productive year 1844. Illusions, quarrels and compromises from which conflicting ideas of the antebellum nation ultimately arose; Origins of American national identity; Works articulating Poe's critique of nationalism.

Examines evidences of nationalism in `Troilus and Cressida,' by William Shakespeare. Embodiment of the principles of the bastard; Origin of nationalism; Comparison with Thomas Heywood's `Iron Age'; Conceptions of citizenship expressed in tropes involving genealogy; Criticism on the failure of Shakespeare to respect unity of character.

This article presents the question of Italian national identity as it is explored through the works of Sebastiano Vassalli (b. 1941). Vassallis focus on discovering the roots of the national character has been a defining feature of his oeuvre. In recent years and in an international context, social theorists, political scientists, historians and others have contributed to a now substantial literature on the concepts of nation, national identity and nationalism, concerns of particular relevance for the culture and society of today. Vassalli conducts a literary investigation of many of the topics addressed in contemporary academic discussions of the concept of nation. He presents an often controversial and provocative vision of the national character and argues that it is necessary for writers and critics to examine Italian national identity through history. As a result, he believes that only by identifying and confronting the mistakes, or “character flaws”, of the collective nation will a truly mature society emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]