Southeast Asian Ecocriticism presents a timely exploration of the rapidly expanding field of ecocriticism through its devotion to the writers, creators, theorists, traditions, concerns, and landscapes of Southeast Asian countries. While ecocritics have begun to turn their attention to East and South Asian contexts and, particularly, to Chinese and Indian cultural productions, less emphasis has been placed on the diverse environmental traditions of Southeast Asia. Building on recent scholarship in Asian ecocriticism, the book gives prominence to the range of theoretical models and practical approaches employed by scholars based within, and located outside of, the Southeast region. Consisting of twelve chapters, Southeast Asian Ecocriticism includes contributions on the ecological prose, poetry, cinema, and music of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The authors emphasize the transnational exchanges of materials, technologies, texts, motifs, and ideas between Southeast Asian countries and Australia, England, Taiwan (Formosa), and the United States. From environmental hermeneutics, postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, and ecofeminism to critical plant studies, ecopoetics, and ecopedagogy, the edited collection embodies the dynamic breadth of interdisciplinary environmental scholarship today. Southeast Asian Ecocriticism foregrounds the theories, practices, and prospects of ecocriticism in the region. The volume opens up new directions and reveals fresh possibilities not only for ecocritical scholarship in Southeast Asia but for a comparative environmental criticism that transcends political boundaries and national canons. The volume highlights the important role of literature in heightening awareness of ecological issues at local, regional, and global scales.

Religious identity constitutes a key element in the formation, development and sustenance of South Asian diasporic communities. Through studies of South Asian communities situated in multiple locales, this book explores the role of religious identity in the social and political organization of the diaspora. It accounts for the factors that underlie the modification of ritual practice in the process of resettlement, and considers how multicultural policies in the adopted state, trans-generational changes and the proliferation of transnational media has impacted the development of these identities in the diaspora. Also crucial is the gender dimension, in terms of how religion and caste affect women's roles in the South Asian diaspora. What emerges then from the way separate communities in the diaspora negotiate religion are diverse patterns that are strategic and contingent. Yet, paradoxically, the dynamic and evolving relationship between religion and diaspora becomes necessary, even imperative, for sustaining a cohesive collective identity in these communities. This bookw as published as a special issue of South Asian Diaspora.

Religious identity constitutes a key element in the formation, development and sustenance of South Asian diasporic communities. Through studies of South Asian communities situated in multiple locales, this book explores the role of religious identity in the social and political organization of the diaspora. It accounts for the factors that underlie the modification of ritual practice in the process of resettlement, and considers how multicultural policies in the adopted state, trans-generational changes and the proliferation of transnational media has impacted the development of these identities in the diaspora. Also crucial is the gender dimension, in terms of how religion and caste affect women's roles in the South Asian diaspora. What emerges then from the way separate communities in the diaspora negotiate religion are diverse patterns that are strategic and contingent. Yet, paradoxically, the dynamic and evolving relationship between religion and diaspora becomes necessary, even imperative, for sustaining a cohesive collective identity in these communities. This bookw as published as a special issue of South Asian Diaspora.

This book is a comparative study of four novels respectively of Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan, Sourcing original works in Sanksrit and Tamil, this study attempts to tease out the similarities in themes and the common concern with traditional Hindu motifs and patterns that underlie these narratives, to reveal these authors' engagement with various aspects of Hinduism, from the 'ontological quest' at its centre to the more contentious caste system. The novels examined are Raja Rao's Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope, The Cat and Shakespeare and The Chessmaster and His Moves and R. K. Narayan's The Man-Eater of Malgudi, Mr Sampath, The Guide and The Painter of Signs. In the study, the terms 'mythology' and 'philosophies' include not just the legends and stories of the ancient texts and the associated philosophies, but a whole corpus of social attitudes these generate.

In recent decades, East Asia has gained prominence and has become synonymous with Asia, while other Asian regions, such as South and Southeast Asia, have been subsumed under it. The resultant overgeneralization has meant that significant aspects of the global ecological crisis as they affect these two regions have been overlooked. Chitra Sankaran refocuses the global lens on these two rapidly developing regions of Asia. Combining South Asian and Southeast Asian philosophical views and folk perspectives with mainstream ecocritical and ecofeminist theories, she generates a localized critical idiom that qualifies and subverts some established theoretical assumptions. This pioneering study, introducing a corpus of more than thirty ecofictions by women writers from twelve countries in South and Southeast Asia, examines how recent global threats to ecosystems, in both nature and culture, impact subdominant groups, including women. This new corpus reveals how women and subalterns engage with various aspects of critical ecologies. Using ecofeminist theory augmented by postcolonial and risk theories as the main theoretical framework, Sankaran argues that these women writers present unique perspectives that review Asian women's relationships to human and nonhuman worlds.

In recent decades, East Asia has gained prominence and has become synonymous with Asia, while other Asian regions, such as South and Southeast Asia, have been subsumed under it. The resultant overgeneralization has meant that significant aspects of the global ecological crisis as they affect these two regions have been overlooked. Chitra Sankaran refocuses the global lens on these two rapidly developing regions of Asia. Combining South Asian and Southeast Asian philosophical views and folk perspectives with mainstream ecocritical and ecofeminist theories, she generates a localized critical idiom that qualifies and subverts some established theoretical assumptions. This pioneering study, introducing a corpus of more than thirty ecofictions by women writers from twelve countries in South and Southeast Asia, examines how recent global threats to ecosystems, in both nature and culture, impact subdominant groups, including women. This new corpus reveals how women and subalterns engage with various aspects of critical ecologies. Using ecofeminist theory augmented by postcolonial and risk theories as the main theoretical framework, Sankaran argues that these women writers present unique perspectives that review Asian women's relationships to human and nonhuman worlds.

Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Oxford, Wien. The twenty-seven essays in this volume are the product of the Ninth Biennial Symposium on the Literatures and Cultures of the Asia-Pacific Region held in Singapore in December 1999. The contributions explore complicitous interactions between cultures, nations and people in the Asia-Pacific Region. Grouped into the three sections of « Asia-Pacific Relations, « The Politics of Identity and « Language, Gender and Empowerment, these essays examine selected texts from countries which include Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Micronesia. Contents: Liew-Geok Leong/Rajeev S. Patke/Chitra Sankaran: General Introduction - Liew-Geok Leong: Introduction to Part I - Bruce Bennett: Singapore and Australia: Collaborators - Megumi Kato: The Scared Who Want to Scare. Fear of a Japanese Invasion in Australian Literature - John McLaren: Nationalism and Imperialism. Australia's Ambivalent Relationship to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands - Tony Hughes-d'Aeth: Old Walls and New. The Australian Poet in the Asia-Pacific - Carlotta Lady Izumi Abrams: Buddha Nature and Aao. The Nexus of Micronesian and Marshallese Legends with the Buddhist Underpinnings of Asian North American Literature - Jeff Partridge: « America is no America - or is it? Transcending Cultural Binaries in Gish Jen's Typical American - Vicky Lee: Eurasian Voices in Wartime Hong Kong - Ryan Bishop: Births of Nations. Narrativity, Nativity, Naivete, and Postcolonial Historical « m'm'ry in Finnegans Wake and Shame - Lily Rose Tope: The Shifting Nation of the Chinese-Filipino Writer - Rajeev S.Patke: Introduction to Part II - Chiu Man Yin: A Portrait of the Nation as Four Young Men - Anne Brewster: Adolescence and the post-65 Generation. Colin Cheong's The Stolen Child - Philip Jeyaretnam: Tiger City or How Singapore Writers Can Earn Their Stripes - Rajeev S. Patke: Ambivalence and Ambiguity in the Poetry of Arthur Yap - Eddie Tay: Unsettling Ways of Exile. The Unhomely in the Poetry of Wong Phui Nam - Susan Philip: The Evolving Identity of Malaysian Indians. A Comparison of K. S. Maniam's The Cord and Allan Perera and Indi Nadarajah's Quid Pro Quo - Makarand Paranjape: Displaced Relations. Diasporas, Empires, Homelands - Sonia Mycak: The Febrication of Ukrainian-Australian Identity by Helen Darville - Timothy R. White: Complicating National Cinemas - Chitra Sankaran: Introduction to Part III - Irina Aristarkhova: Otherness in Net-Communities. Practising Difference in Virtual Context - Richard B. Baldauf Jr.: Literature and the Intellectualisation of Language through Language Policy and Planning - Dennis Haskell: « now where's she off to. Gender and Class in the Poetry of Bruce Dawe - Liew-Geok Leong: Cultural Domains and Male Discourses in A Dance of Moths - Shirley Geok-lin Lim: History and Fiction, Sons and Widows. Gendering and Racing the Colonized in Chin Kee Onn's Twilight Of The Nyonyas - Susan Y. Najita: Resemblances and Complicity. The Construction of Pakeha History in The Piano - Chitra Sankaran/K.K. Seet: Intersections of the Nation in Two Plays by Robert Yeo Changi and One Year Back Home - Ismail S. Talib: Divisions, Sub-Divisions, Linkages, Mixtures - Peter K. W. Tan: « Is that how we really talk? Speech Reporting in Singaporean Writing in English.