Gendering Graphics in Indian Superhero Comic Books and Some Notes for Provincializing Cultural Studies

With a focus on the Hindi language superhero comics produced by Raj Comics since the 1980s, this article investigates instances of “modernities in the backyard” and their implications for studying postcolonial popular culture. The graphic narratives in the comic books are neither simply Westernized or transgressive, nor necessarily framed by a mythicized or Orientalised discursive framework. Instead, they register a distinctive heritage combining vernacular and mythic prototypes with hypermodern visions with which to imagine new powers for Indian men and women, even though women may continue to be shaped by the masculinist, desirous gaze and modulated by patriarchal expectations to do with female docility and marriageability. The enquiry provides unique material to chart out the lineaments of postcolonial culture, gender, and power in order to provincialize the scope of cultural studies.     

后殖民主义视阈中的《野草在歌唱》

英国著名女作家莱辛的成名作<野草在歌唱>真实地展示了在种族隔离制度下的南部非洲的社会现状,但也暴露出西方文学传统中所特有的殖民性对其所产生的影响.影响主要表现在写作意图、语言的运用、艺术手法以及意象的借用和营构等方面.     

The Construction of the Identity of Chinese Canadian Women--Analyzing the Characterization of May-Ying in the Concubine’s Children

Denise Chong’s first novel the Concubine’s Children, not only enjoys the high compliments from the critics but also gains great popular among common readers. This paper intends to study the constructio...     

Subaltern Thinking in Religious Education? Postcolonial Readings of (German) Schoolbooks

ABSTRACT

This paper deals with the disclosure of subaltern thinking in current German-language textbooks for religious education. For the hermeneutical framing of this analysis, the approach of a postcolonial reading is particularly profitable. Obvious hierarchical relationships from clearly up and down can consequently be made visible and their presumed self-evidence unmasked. Even hidden hegemonic forms of expression can be uncovered in this way. With regard to current theology and religious education racism and misogyny, environmental degradation and sexual exploitation are attitudes that have already and almost as amatter of course been taken up critically. They are pedagogically reflected and attempted to overcome by using counter-models such as cultural diversity, equal rights, sustainability and sexual self-determination.In exciting contrast to this there are still nowadays textbooks used with remnants of exactly such formats of colonial thoughts. We argue that decolonising schoolbooks can be a useful part of decolonising the religious education curriculum. The schoolbook analysis carried out for this purpose is structured by four leading categories: Anthropological assumptions (1), religious classifications and interpretations (2), conceptions of culture and its hybridity (3) and finally the relationship to creation and environment (4). Textbooks from primary, secondary and vocational schools were examined.     

Domestic and international power relations in a Cameroonian mission school system

This paper is a critical ethnography of mathematics teachers in a Cameroonian private, mission school system. Findings from in-depth interviews with secondary mathematics teachers indicate that most of these teachers perceive their educational situation as disconnected, in several ways, from their cultures. However, most participants look to western processes as models for their own development. An analysis of state and international postcolonial hegemonies which influence these teachers is presented, including allocation of resources, curricular agendas, and professional development opportunities.     

华裔女性身份的重构——试析《正骨师的女儿》中的华裔女性

美籍华裔女性生活在男权社会和白人社会的双重边缘,她们不清楚自己到底该归属何方,身份重建的必要性就得以凸显。谭恩美在《正骨师的女儿》中颠覆主流话语中华裔女性的刻板形象,赋予这些边缘无根女性以新的身份,使她们最终在主流社会中找到了自己的位置。     

Child as method: implications for decolonising educational research

This paper advances an approach, ‘child as method’, as a resource for interrogating models of development in childhood and education. Kuan-Hsing Chen’s (2010) book Asia as method has generated interest across childhood and educational studies. Here ‘child as method’ is presented as a related intervention. Just as Asia as method (re)considers the status of the national and transnational, so ‘child as method’ helps explicate the ways ‘child’ and ‘development’ are linked across economic, sociocultural and individual trajectories. The example of translation is discussed in relation to sociocultural approaches and how together these might inform childhood and educational studies debates. The notion of ‘method’ at work (as framework, technique or narrative) is also clarified as informed by feminist and decolonisation approaches. It is argued that ‘child as method’ offers strategies for resisting abstraction and remaining attentive to forces and relations of (re)production at issue within adult–child and child-state-development relations.     

Physical Activities through Postcolonial Eyes: A Place of Epistemologic and Historiographical Experimentation

This contribution has a triple objective. The first is historical; it is to identify works, analysis, and perspectives covering the history of sport, which relate to the field of Postcolonial Studies developed elsewhere. By discussing anglophone and francophone works, we try to show the differentiated dynamics of research carried out in these two areas, while highlighting what each one owes to the other and vice versa. The second aim is analytical. We try to bring out the main themes of these works while proposing – from a postcolonial perspective – possible areas of research to pursue. Finally, the last objective is epistemologic. It discusses some problematic areas of interpretation around the role of physical activities in the process of colonization and decolonization.     

Breaking the Myth of Indian Call Centers: A Postcolonial Analysis of Resistance

This article provides a postcolonial critique of power-resistance dialectics among outsourced call center workers in India. A constructivist grounded theory analysis of focus group and interview data with 65 participants reveals how microresistance intersects with global capitalism in ways that both accommodate and rupture Western discourses. These discursive and material intersectionalities are made visible through employees' processes of (1) aping the West, (2) articulating new logics and demonstrating Indian sensibilities, and (3) embracing a new life. The themes primarily reveal how the employees rupture the essentialist image of the other and challenge the dominant logic of neoliberalism.     

Feminist pedagogy and social change: the impact of the caribbean institute in gender and development

This paper examines the utility of a feminist pedagogical framework in establishing and organising the Caribbean Institute in Gender and Development (CIGAD), which is a biennial intensive gender and development training programme that has taken place in Barbados since 1993. To highlight the major impact that CIGAD has had in educating and empowering Caribbean men and women, the authors will first discuss the importance of feminist pedagogies in teaching, learning and activism in this programme by locating them within an intersectional postcolonial/transnational framework. Secondly, the authors consider the ways in which feminist pedagogy and praxis have been central in training women and men in the Caribbean region in gender analysis, helping them recognise the important role gender plays in development planning and policy as well as how it can be integrated into their work to improve their communities. Finally, through a feminist dialogic, participatory and experiential approach, the authors assess the impact that the CIGAD has had on participants, and community development training will be discussed based on the monitoring and evaluation of the exercise completed in 2014.