History : Colonial Studies

Susan Castillo's pioneering study examines the extraordinary proliferation of polyphonic or 'multi-voiced' texts in the three centuries following the first contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Taking a selection of plays, printed dialogues, travel narratives and lexicographic studies in English, Spanish and French, the book explores both European and indigenous writers of the early Americas. Paying particular attention to performance and performativity in the texts of the early colonial world, Susan Castillo asks: - why vast numbers of polyphonic and performative texts emerged in the Early Americas - how these texts enabled explorers, settlers and indigenous groups to come to terms with radical differences in language, behaviour and cultural practices - how dialogues, plays and paratheatrical texts were used to impose or resist ideologies and cultural norms - how performance and polyphony allowed Europeans and Americans to debate exactly what it meant to be European or American, or in some cases, both. Tracing the dynamic enactment of (often conflictive) encounters between differing local narratives, Castillo presents polyphonic texts as not only singularly useful tools for exploring what initially seemed inexpressible or for conveying controversial ideas, but also as the site where cultural difference is negotiated. Affording unparalleled linguistic and historical range, through the analysis of texts from Spain, France, New Spain, Peru, Brazil, New England and New France, this volume is an important advance in the study of early American literature and the writings of colonial encounter. more...

Price: $35.95

Explores how images of African colonialism have been influenced by European and American racism and sexual fantasies. more...

Price: $72.00

Nineteenth-century French writers and travelers imagined Muslim colonies in North Africa to be realms of savage violence, lurid sexuality, and primitive madness. Colonial Madness traces the genealogy and development of this idea from the beginnings of colonial expansion to the present, revealing the ways in which psychiatry has been at once a weapon in the arsenal of colonial racism, an innovative branch of medical science, and a mechanism for negotiating the meaning of difference for republican citizenship. Drawing from extensive archival research and fieldwork in France and North Africa, Richard Keller offers much more than a history of colonial psychology. Colonial Madness explores the notion of what French thinkers saw as an inherent mental, intellectual, and behavioral rift marked by the Mediterranean, as well as the idea of the colonies as an experimental space freed from the limitations of metropolitan society and reason. These ideas have modern relevance, Keller argues, reflected in French thought about race and debates over immigration and France’s postcolonial legacy. more...

Price: $25.00

Using Shakespeare as a case in point, this book shows how the study of English Literature was implicated in the ideology of the empires in colonies such as India. The author argues that these studies promote western culture. more...

Price: $125.00

Examining case studies, each a micro history of a particular colonial situation and a sexual encounter, this is a thorough investigation of the connections of homosexuality and imperialism from the late 1800s until the era of decolonization. more...

Price: $41.95