Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons^™

Boundaries Of Knowledge: Expertise And Professionalism In British And Postcolonial Literature, Patrick Steven Herald

Theses and Dissertations--English

The social sciences have developed robust bodies of scholarship on expertise and professionalism, yet literary analyses of the two remain comparatively sparse. I address this gap in Boundaries of Knowledge by examining recent Anglophone fiction and showing that expertise and professionalism are central concerns of contemporary authors, both as subject matter in fiction and in their public identities. I argue that the novelists studied use and abuse expertise and professionalism: they critique professions as participant observers, and also borrow the mantle of expert credibility to bolster their own cultural capital while documenting the pitfalls of expertise in their fiction.

My …

The Travel Imagination And The Hybrid Reality In The Wake Of Colonialism, James Mclaughlin

Honors Theses

The “traveling imagination,” is of paramount importance to both western and postcolonial travelers. Since both groups create “travel imaginations” by extensive reading, the nature of the books that inform them must directly affect their travels. A westerner, for example, who reads only colonial-era accounts has the “travel imagination” of a different generation. If all perspectives were represented equally in libraries, the “travel imagination” of a given person would be entirely his/her own. But usually the “traveler’s imagination” is biased by prevailing opinion. Libraries are not democracies, and sometimes extensive reading only indoctrinates the reader with the biases of the canon. …