Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Society in a 'Post'-Colonial World (ASNEL Papers 9.2; Cross/Cultures 79) (Hardcover) (June, 2005)
by Geoffrey V. Davis; Peter H. Marsden; Bénédicte Ledent; Marc Delrez (Editor)
This second collection, complementing ASNEL Papers 9.1, covers a similar range of writers, topics, themes and issues, all focusing on present-day transcultural issues and their historical antecedents:
TOPICS TREATED
Preparing for post-apartheid in South African fiction. Maori culture and the New Historicism. Danish-New Zealand acculturation. linguistic approaches to ‘void’. women’s overcoming in Southern African writing. new post-apartheid approaches to literary studies. Afrikanerdom. postmodern psychoanalytic interpretations of Indian religion and identity. transcultural identity in the encounter with London: Malaysian, Nigerian, Pakistani. hypertextual postmodernism. fictionalized multiculturalism and female madness in Australian fiction. myopia and double vision in colonial Australia. Native-American fiction and poetry. Chinese-Canadian and Japanese-Canadian multiculturalism. the postcolonial city. African-American identity and postcolonial Africa. Johannesburg as locus of literary and dramatic creativity. theatre before and after apartheid. the black experience in England
WRITERS DISCUSSED
Lalithambika Antherjanam; Ayi Kwei Armah; J.C. Coetzee; Tsitsi Dangarembga; Helen Darville; Lauris Edmond; Buchi Emecheta; Yvonne du Fresne; Hiromi Goto; Patricia Grace; Rodney Hall; Joy Harjo; Bessie Head; Gordon Henry Jr.; Christopher Hope; Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; Hanif Kureishi; Keri Hulme, Lee Kok Liang; Bill Manhire; Zakes Mda; Mike Nicol; Michael Ondaatje; Alan Paton; Ravinder Randhawa; Wendy Rose; Salman Rushdie; Sipho Sepamla; Atima Srivastava; Meera Syal; Marlene van Niekerk; Yvonne Vera; Fred Wah
CRITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS BY
Ken Arvidson; Thomas Brückner; David Callahan; Eleonora Chiavetta; Marc Colavincenzo; Gordon Collier; John Douthwaite; Dorothy Driver; Claudia Duppé; Robert Fraser; Anne Fuchs; John Gamgee; D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke; Konrad Gross; Bernd Herzogenrath; Susanne Hilf; Clara A.B. Joseph; Jaroslav Kušnír; Chantal Kwast–Greff; M.Z. Malaba; Sigrun Meinig; Michael Meyer; Mike Nicol; Obododimma Oha; Vincent O’Sullivan; Judith Dell Panny; Mike Petry; Jochen Petzold; Norbert H. Platz; Malcolm Purkey; Stéphanie Ravillon; Anne Holden Rønning; Richard Samin; Cecile Sandten; Nicole Schröder; Joseph Swann; André Viola; Christine Vogt–William; Bernard Wilson; Janet Wilson; Brian Worsfold.

Crime in Literature: Sociology of Deviance and Fiction (July 31, 2003)
by Vincenzo Ruggiero
Jonathan Rée
This well-informed study of history, politics and literature...makes an eloquent, powerful and timely book.
Crime in Literature addresses the issues of crime and crime control through the reading of several classical literary works. It is not a work of literary criticism, but a book written by a sociologist who reads fiction sociologically. Vincent Ruggiero's wide-ranging study takes in several authors, including Hugo, Dostoevsky, Camus, Cervantes, Mann and Zola, and addresses themes such as organized crime, the links between crime and drugs, political and administrative corruption, concepts of deviancy, and the criminal justice process.
Ruggiero recounts Alessandro Manzoni's La colonna infame, drawing provocative parallels between the way the authorities in Milan dealt with the devastating plague of 1630 and the ways in which contemporary law incessantly seeks new "plague spreaders" in order to legitimize its own operations.
Accessible to the general reader, Crime in Literature offers an original and thought-provoking survey that will be of interest to sociologists and criminologists as well as cultural and literary theorists.

A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society (May, 2004)
by A. H. Halsey

Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Sociology of Law and Crime) (Hardcover)
by Eugene Benson, L. W. Conolly (Editor) How the process of colonization affects literature.
From Library Journal
This encyclopedia loosely refers to writing affected by the process of colonization. Bangladesh, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Malta, and Sri Lanka are only a few of the countries included. While there are other works on individual countries and types of literature, such as the Oxford Companion to Canadian Theater (Oxford Univ. Pr., 1989) or the Reference Guide to Short Fiction (St. James, 1993), no major source compares regarding number of countries or areas of literature covered. Individual writers, national literary developments, and major genres that provide a cross-cultural view are all assessed. Entries on individuals include a short identifier, coverage of works, and biography, and for most a brief bibliography that makes further exploration of little-known authors easier. The entries on the national literary movements and the genres are lengthy and include a bibliography. All entries are signed. With the growing multicultural emphasis on literature, this work is a welcome and needed source. Highly recommended for all undergraduate collections.
Neal Wyatt, Mary Washington Coll. Lib., Fredericksburg, Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On Symbols and Society (Heritage of Sociology Series)
by Kenneth Burke, Joseph R. Gusfield (Editor)
Kenneth Burke's innovative use of dramatism and dialectical method have made him a powerful critical force in an extraordinary variety of disciplines--education, philosophy, history, psychology, religion, and others. While most widely acclaimed as a literary critic, Burke has elaborated a perspective toward the study of behavior and society that holds immense significance and rich insights for sociologists. This original anthology brings together for the first time Burke's key writings on symbols and social relations to offer social scientists access to Burke's thought.
In his superb introductory essay, Joseph R. Gusfield traces the development of Burke's approach to human action and its relationship to other similar sources of theory and ideas in sociology; he discusses both Burke's influence on sociologists and the limits of his perspective. Burke regards literature as a form of human behavior--and human behavior as embedded in language. His lifework represents a profound attempt to understand the implications for human behavior based on the fact that humans are "symbol-using animals." As this volume demonstrates, the work that Burke produced from the 1930s through the 1960s stands as both precursor and contemporary key to recent intellectual movements such as structuralism, symbolic anthropology, phenomenological and interpretive sociology, critical theory, and the renaissance of symbolic interaction.

Towards Tragedy/Reclaiming Hope: Literature, Theology and Sociology in Conversation (July 30, 2004)
by Richard K. Fenn (Foreword), Douglas Gwyn, Rachel Muers, Brian Phillips, Richard E. Sturm, Pink Dandelion (Editor)
The 'death of tragedy' in the modern era has been proposed and debated in recent years, largely in terms of literature and western culture in general. Today, any catastrophe or misadventure is likely to be labeled a 'tragedy', without any inference of a larger, transcendent horizon or providential design that the word once conveyed.
This book offers new perspectives on the idea of the 'death of tragedy', taking England and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in particular as a case study. Chapters focus on the origins of tragedy in ancient Greece, gospel and tragedy, the beginnings of the Quaker movement in seventeenth-century England, apocalyptic versus secularized experiences of time, Edwardian Quaker triumphalism, the search for English identity in postcolonial Britain, liberal Quakerism at the end of the twentieth century, and the promise and dilemma of postmodernity. The different disciplinary perspectives of the contributing authors bring literature, history, theology and sociology into a creative and revealing conversation. A Foreword by Richard Fenn introduces the book with an original and provocative meditation on tragedy and time.
Pink Dandelion, Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre/University of Birmingham, UKDouglas Gwyn, Woodbrooke College, UK, Rachel Muers, University of Cambridge, UK, Brian Phillips, Oxford Brookes University, UK and Richard E.Sturm, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, USA.

Between Literature and Science : The Rise of Sociology (Ideas in Context)
by Wolf Lepenies, Quentin Skinner (Series Editor), Lorraine Daston (Series Editor), Dorothy Ross (Series Editor), James Tully (Series Editor), R. J. Hollingdale (Translator)
The theme of this book is the conflict that arose in the early nineteenth century between the literary and scientific intellectuals of Europe, as they competed for recognition as the chief analysts of the new industrial society in which they lived. Sociology was conceived as the third major discipline, a hybrid of the scientific and literary traditions. The author chronicles the rise of the new discipline by discussing the lives and works of the most prominent thinkers of the time, in England, France, and Germany. The book presents a penetrating study of idealists grappling with reality when industrial society was in its infancy. Published with the support of the Exxon Education Foundation.

Nationalism and Literature : The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies)
by Sarah M. Corse, Jeffrey C. Alexander (Series Editor), Steven Seidman (Series Editor)
This analysis of two hundred American and Canadian novels offers a new theory of national literatures, demonstrating that national canon formation occurs in tandem with nation-building. It accounts for cross-national differences and illuminates the historically constructed and symbolic nature of the relationship between literature and the nation-state. High-culture national literatures are selected as different from other novels; popular-culture bestsellers are mass market commodities for the largest, least differentiated audience.

Literature and Society
by Chih-p'ing Chou, Ying Wang, Xuedong Wang
SIPs: underlined expressions
CAPs: Heavenly Stems
The subject matter of the lessons is not only fascinating (the selections with humor and sarcasm will really appeal to American students!), but it is up to date--no other reader on the market offers the sociological perspective on China that one finds in this text.
Literature and Society, a textbook designed for upper-level students, usually in their fourth year of studying Chinese, contains literary works and essays related to the social sciences. It reflects the social issues China has faced in recent years and represents a new approach to introducing students to various aspects of Chinese society. The textbook contains two sections. The first, entitled "Literature," includes works by Lu Xun, Lin Yutang, Liang Shiqiu, Wang Li, Xie Bingying, and Wang Meng. The selections include essays, short stories, and one play. Each selection reflects a different side of Chinese life, from offering hospitality to guests and haggling over prices to philosophical issues. The second section of the textbook, entitled "Society," includes essays by Fei Xiaotong, Ma Yinchu, Wu Han, Liang Sicheng, and Chen Hengzhe. These works cover six issues: marriage and family, population and ethics, urbanization, intellectuals, minorities, and the preservation of ancient architecture in a modern city. The textbook provides a brief introduction to each author and discussion questions at the end of each piece.