Transgressions / Transformations: Literature and Beyond

With its particular focus on ‘transformations’ and ‘transgressions,’ this volume attempts to identify and explore phenomena that reflect the crossing of boundaries of various kinds, be they generic, aesthetic, linguistic, or production-related ones. The twenty-eight papers in this book have been selected from contributions to the conference on “Transgressions / Transformations: Literature and Beyond” held at the University of Göttingen under the auspices of CISLE (Centre of the International Study of Literatures in English) based at the University of Innsbruck. The book hopes to throw new light on the occasionally subversive (narrative and content-related) strategies on the part of the authors discussed and presents personal observations by well-known writers on the transformations they themselves experienced in the course of their lives and careers. The contributors to this volume investigated the crossing of formal and thematic boundaries as well as generic transformations against the background of an increasingly globalized world, and addressed the following topics: literary, cultural, and social transgressions and transformations, and their respective connections with transculturality; transmedial approaches in Anglophone literatures and cultures; new forms of pursuing or subverting postcolonial interests; literary evaluations of the post-human; as well as recent explorations of post-ethnicity and cosmopolitanism.