Literary Research and Postcolonial Literatures in English

Postcolonial literatures can be defined as the body of creative work written by authors whose lands were formerly subjugated to colonial rule. In previous volumes of this series, the research literature of former British colonies Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand have been addressed. This volume offers guidance for those researching the postcolonial literature of the former British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia. Among the forty nations represented in this volume are South Africa, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Jamaica, Swaziland, Belize, and Namibia. With the exception of South Africa (which formed the Union of South Africa in 1910), this guide picks up its coverage in 1947, when both India and Pakistan gained their independence. The literature created by writers from these nations represents the diverse experiences in the postcolonial condition and are the subject of this book. The volume provides best-practice suggestions for the research process and discusses how to take advantage of primary text resources in a variety of formats, both digital and paper based: bibliographies, indexes, research guides, archives, special collections, and microforms.

The authors of this title have put together a wonderful tool for researchers into the post-Colonial literatures in English with their book....Broken down into easy-to-understand and use chapters, the authors not only discuss the resources available to researchers but give examples on how to use them. This is neatly organized, beginning with the basics of online searching and going so far as to encourage the researcher to formulate his or her question into a statement to find keywords and concepts that can be used in the search. Truly, this book would be useful for even the novice researcher at the college level. Other guides, books, and resources are pointed out along the way through this enjoyable-to-read book. The authors do not shy away from mentioning the most basic resources such as the database JSTOR, which some larger research books tend to do because they believe that the reader knows about them. No resource is left unturned. This volume focuses on the post colonial literatures of the former British colonies of Africa, the Caribbean, and South Africa, including India, Pakistan, Ghana, Jamaica, Swaziland, and Belize. Because so many countries are represented there is a vast array of experiences and social conditions shared within the literature explored. This title is highly recommended for beginning researchers as well as those more advanced in this field., Part of the "Literary Research" series, this volume engages with an often underrepresented realm of study. To add to the challenge, the work does not limit itself to a neatly delineated set of geographical boundaries--rather, it covers literature in English from over 40 nations and three continents. A working definition of the postcolonial epoch posits 1947, the year of India's and Pakistan's independence, as a starting date; for many countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, the date would have to be a bit different. As seasoned academic librarians, authors Christenberry, A. Courtney, L. Golomb, and M. S. Van Vuuren bring to this volume a keen eye for detail and an emphasis on accessibility. The book opens with a review of the basics of online searching, offering the librarian's perspective; screen shots of MARC records and passages on the minutiae of constructing search terms give readers a flavor for how knowledge is structured, and how this architecture mediates a search. Successive chapters cover catalogs, print/electronic bibliographies, indexes, union catalogs, archives (both analog and digital), web resources, and specific journal titles. The book reads like a meta-bibliography; its annotations draw out crucial details of scope, content, perspective, and access. That so much juicy and valuable information finds its home in a print volume seems at once triumph and tragedy, since this volume likely would find a devoted audience if it were an online pathfinder. For now, however, researchers and librarians can consider themselves lucky that this title exists at all. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above., Fay Christenberry’s Literary Research and Postcolonial Literatures in English Strategies and Sources is an invaluable reference work.

Angela Courtney is head of the Arts and Humanities Department at the Indiana University-Bloomington Libraries, where she is also the librarian for English literatures, film studies, theatre and drama, communication and culture, and comparative literature.Melissa S. Van Vuuren is associate professor and English librarian at James Madison University.H. Faye Christenberry is English studies librarian at the University of Washington Libraries.Liorah Golomb is assistant professor and humanities librarian at the University of Oklahoma.