“When the Kalmyks saw me, they thought I was their black devil”: Inverting Centres and Peripheries in Colonial Travelogues Written by East Africans

Travelogues are a rich medium through which to explore observations of everyday culture and rituals, perceptions of the world order, and narrative strategies of othering. In this paper, I turn my attention to travelogues written by East Africans (coastal Swahili Muslims, diasporic Shi’i and Parsi South Asians, and Christian Ugandans) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the authors come from different religious groupings, cultural-linguistic backgrounds and socio-economic milieus, they travel the same routes within East Africa and, occasionally, also to Europe or even as far as Siberia. I argue that the texts (including journals, retrospectives, and ethnographies) must be read as documents of East African cosmopolitanism. Mobility enables the authors to subvert the imperial world order by re-framing it narratively according to their own religious identity. This gives rise to reflections on humanity, equality and the beauty of knowledge, but not to the exclusion of racial and religious bigotry within and between the non-European communities in East Africa. In my analysis, I tease out narrative patterns, observational styles, and literary tropes present in the texts across religious boundaries. As all the texts were either commissioned by Europeans or edited by their translators before publication they do not document naively ‘authentic’ perspectives of East Africans, but reflect the complexities of communication within strict racial hierarchies. In concluding, I discuss the potential of religion to invert colonial centres and peripheries: European metropoles become places of exotic fascination while the familiar practices of co-religionists can turn the ‘hinterland’ into centres of learning.

“A Hand of Ivory”: Moving Objects in Psellos’ Oration for his Daughter Styliane. A Case-Study

This paper takes its cue from the recent interest in materiality and “things” in the field of Byzantine studies, to explore the role of objects in evoking being moved. First, it advances a new model to explain the relationship between being moved and affordances. Second, it focuses on a specific case study, that is Michael Psellos’ funeral oration for his daughter Styliane (1054), who died of smallpox at the age of 9 years old. The paper sheds light on how affective affordances of an object contribute to the evocation of being moved in literary texts, working within and affecting narrative patterns. While building on the experience of ethical and spiritual principles clearly recognizable by the audience, such affordances point toward the activation of broader core values.

The “Cairé” and “The Ghost of Komat” Textual Landscapes and Cultural Heritage in Argentinean and Slovenian Folktales

The present article proposes a comparative approach to Argentinean and Slovenian tales that share thematic features with ATU 326 (“The youth who wanted to learn what fear is”) from the standpoint of the fictional construction of verbal landscapes. The comparison is oriented to identifying similar narrative patterns dealing not only with thematic tale types but also with structural and stylistic features, along with changing details. The thematic, structural, and stylistic features common to different versions conform to a narrative matrix, which acts as a pretext to be recreated in diverse narrative contexts. The changing details give new meanings to universal pattern connected with the cultural heritage of different local contexts, such as the Argentinean and the Slovenian ones.

Beyond Ferguson

After the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, mainstream newspaper coverage focused extensively on protesters actions and left little room for narratives that explore the demands, grievances, and agendas of the social movement to end police violence and save Black lives. Over time, coverage of Black Lives Matter protests remained problematic and publicly critiqued. This chapter uses a content analysis of newspaper coverage four years after the death of Michael Brown to reassess press coverage narratives that dominated the protests that followed the police killing of unarmed Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California. Digital newspaper coverage from national, large metropolitan and local papers was analyzed for six months after the March 20, 2018 shooting of Clark. Coverage was also tracked through public social media networks to look for narrative patterns in the most shared coverage.

Grotesque, Shadow and Individuation: A Jungian Reading of Selected Short Stories by Tunku Halim and Edgar Allan Poe

In examining Malaysian literature in light of the global canon, one cannot miss the numerous parallelisms between literary works by Tunku Halim bin Tunku Abdullah and Edgar Allan Poe. Both writers are preoccupied with grotesque realities of mentally deranged individuals, and similarly visualize the darkness and animality of human consciousness. This article aims at conducting a comparative analysis of the dynamics of personality and of the psyche of fictional characters in selected short stories by the two writers. To this end, the study draws upon Jung’s notions of the Shadow and the Individuation to explore the key psychological motives behind the characters’ behaviour patterns, as well as to examine their level of subjectivity and agency in harnessing the same motives. Notwithstanding the seemingly different ways of presenting the narrative patterns of the characters’ journey towards Individuation, the selected stories are marked with similar examples of characters’ failures in the process of self-realization. While some characters remain trapped in the obscure and perplexing world of the Shadow, others achieve a minimal level of maturity as they begin to realize their own being. In the case of Halim’s stories, however, the characters are additionally held back by cultural and structural forces that constantly affect their realities. It is concluded that this particular difference accounts for Halim’s uniquely hybrid style of writing that merges Western horror genre with more local folklore.

The Diffusion of Identity: A Study of Three Contemporary Thai Short Stories through the Lens of Western Narrative Conventions

Literary works give expression to universal themes through settings, subjects, and techniques that are culturally tied. This article reviews generic conventions involving point of view, protagonist, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution that typify Western short stories in order to examine how varying patterns can illuminate cultural contrasts between Thailand and the West. Widely known stories by Katherine Mansfield and Amy Tan serve to exemplify the conventional Western pattern and its versatility and to provide a basis for discovering alternative patterns that characterize numerous contemporary Thai short stories. An analysis of stories by S.E.A. Write award winners Phaitoon Thanya, Anchan, and Ussiri Thammachot through the comparative lens of Western conventions reveals how divergent narrative techniques involving point of view and plot elucidate and corroborate divergent expressions regarding the nature of identity. Narrative patterns in these Thai short stories help produce diffusions of identity that reflect a collectivist ethos and an acceptance of uncertainty and impermanence, while adherence to the Western formula reinforces a core belief in the permanence and persistence of the individual ego over time.

Perioperative nurses' experiences of point-of-care nursing leadership: a narrative inquiry

Front line nurses are increasingly being encouraged to engage in point-of-care nursing leadership to positively influence the health of the persons in the healthcare team and the landscape within which care ensues. Using Connelly and Clandinin’s Narrative Inquiry, I explored how perioperative nurses experience point-of-care nursing leadership in the operating room (OR). My co-participants and I engaged in narrative interviews and Schwind’s Narrative Reflective Process. Participants’ stories were re-constructed and analyzed using Narrative Inquiry’s three levels of justification (personal, practical and social), through the theoretical lenses of Leadership Model and Person-Centred Nursing. Narrative patterns that emerge are: advocacy, relationships, and teaching and learning. The participants’ stories are re-presented using poetry. Implications for nursing and healthcare include a need to embody person-centred care to inform point-of-care leadership practices. A new concept of person-centred point-of-care leadership is developed for further exploration in research.