Palimpsests in Ethnic and Postcolonial Literature and Culture: Surfacing Histories

Yiorgos D. Kalogeras · Johanna C. Kardux · Monika Mueller · Jopi Nyman

Jan 2021 · Springer Nature

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This volume explores ways in which the literary trope of the palimpsest can be applied to ethnic and postcolonial literary and cultural studies. Based on contemporary theories of the palimpsest, the innovative chapters reveal hidden histories and uncover relationships across disciplines and seemingly unconnected texts. The contributors focus on diverse forms of the palimpsest: the incarceration of Native Americans in military forts and their response to the elimination of their cultures; mnemonic novels that rework the politics and poetics of the Black Atlantic; the urban palimpsests of Rio de Janeiro, Marseille, Johannesburg, and Los Angeles that reveal layers of humanity with disparities in origin, class, religion, and chronology; and the palimpsestic configurations of mythologies and religions that resist strict cultural distinctions and argue against cultural relativism.

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Yiorgos D. Kalogeras is Professor Emeritus, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2018). His most recent publication, coedited with Cathy C. Waegner, is Ethnic Resonances in Performance, Literature, and Identity (2020).

Johanna C. Kardux is Director of North American Studies at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her publications include a book on The American Pilgrims in Leiden, 1609-1620 (4th ed. forthcoming in 2020).

Jopi Nyman is Professor of English and Vice Dean at the University of Eastern Finland. His recent books include Displacement, Memory, Travel in Contemporary Migrant Writing (2017) and Border Images, Border Narratives (2021; with Johan Schimanski).

Monika Mueller is Senior Lecturer at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Her most recent publication, coedited with Bettina Hofmann, is Performing Ethnicity, Performing Gender: Transcultural Perspectives (2017).