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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Animate Impossibilities: On Asian Americanist Critique, Racialization, And The Humanities, Frances H. Tran
Animate Impossibilities: On Asian Americanist Critique, Racialization, And The Humanities, Frances H. Tran
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation works from and through the field of Asian American studies, drawing on Asian Americanist cultural critique and minority discourse, to investigate the relationship among race, the politics of knowledge, and the epistemic function of the humanities. Proliferating discourses on “post-race” and “colorblindness” characterizing the present moment posit a progressive movement beyond racial division, towards recognizing and incorporating minority difference into the academy. However, even as issues like “diversity” have gained visibility as institutional objectives, I contend that this heightened visibility occludes the structural conditions that allow racialization to persist. In this project, I follow the work of thinkers …
"The Problem Of Locomotion": Infrastructure And Automobility In Three Postcolonial Urban Nigerian Novels, Danica B. Savonick
"The Problem Of Locomotion": Infrastructure And Automobility In Three Postcolonial Urban Nigerian Novels, Danica B. Savonick
Graduate Student Publications and Research
This essay analyzes automobility in three postcolonial urban Nigerian novels: the fantasy of self-propulsion that subtends a colonial modernity materialized through the erection of urban infrastructure. Tracing the disjuncture between automobility and infrastructure—the “problem of locomotion” (Achebe)—reveals the inextricability of mobility, modernity, urbanism, and colonial violence even into Nigeria’s formally postcolonial period. By exploring how characters both invest in and move beyond inherited colonial narratives, these novels challenge top-down images of Lagos, instead depicting it as a city “otherwise fashioned” (Abani) from their characters’ perspectives on what it feels like to dwell and sell on the streets.