This volume of interdisciplinary essays reflect current contributions to literary anthropology. Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology showcases the myriad ways that anthropologists bring their disciplinary perspectives, theories, concepts, and pedagogical strategies to interpreting fiction and travel writing written in the past and present. The authors integrate insights from the reflexive deconstructive turn in anthropology and from critical Marxist and feminist approaches that ground interpretation in the political, economic, and social constraints and experiences of everyday life. The contributors share the view that fiction, like all artistic expression, is rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts. Literature, like all artistic expression, stimulates a critical imagination by allowing readers to take a fresh look at their own society and culture.

This volume of interdisciplinary essays reflects current contributions to literary anthropology. It showcases the myriad ways that anthropologists bring their disciplinary perspectives, theories, concepts and pedagogical strategies to interpreting fiction and travel writing written in the past and present. The authors integrate insights from the reflexive deconstructive turn in anthropology and from critical Marxist and feminist approaches that ground interpretation in the political, economic, and social constraints and experiences of everyday life. The contributors share the view that fiction, like all artistic expression, is rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts. It therefore provides a rich source of information about societies and time periods in the present and about those that cannot be investigated through traditional ethnographic methods. Literature, like all artistic expression, stimulates a critical imagination by allowing readers to take a fresh look at their own society and culture.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

During the American Revolution tens of thousands of colonists loyal to Britain left the colonies and resettled in Canada, Britain, and the Carribean. Among them were a substantial number of black loyalists. This groundbreaking study explores the lives, struggles, and politics of black loyalists who dispersed throughout the Atlantic region, including Canada, Britain, Sierra Leone, and Jamaica. The struggles of these populations, a "diaspora within a diaspora," for political and economic independence under various British colonial regimes highlight the variety of challenges which faced black loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World.