Postcolonial and Transnational Studies

Postcolonial and Transnational Studies examines the effects of the mobility of people, technologies, ideas, capital, and commodities on contemporary intellectual life, societies, cultural and literary practices. It highlights transcultural and diasporic experiences that exceed national, racial, religious, and linguistic boundaries and challenges traditional literary and humanities scholarship that reifies the classification of texts and cultures in terms of national and regional literatures. Through a primary focus on marginalized textual, literary and cultural formations, TCS thus seeks to redefine disciplinary boundaries such as American or British studies to include transhemispheric linkages, crossgendered and crossracial dynamics, and the shifting relations between host nations and homelands. Taking a theoretical approach to understanding such terms as "globalization," "transnationalism," "postcolonialism," and "neocolonialism," we also make a commitment to intellectual work as a practice of critical intervention in both the academy and broader world.

Postcolonial and Transnational Studies received funding from the Humanities Institute to organize a Research Workshop aimed at drawing together UB faculty and graduate students across the disciplines who are interested in transnational issues.

Postcolonial and Transnational Studies

Faculty

Department of English