Situating Caribbean Literature and Criticism in Multicultural and Postcolonial Studies

Situating Caribbean Literature and Criticism in Multicultural and Postcolonial Studies is a pioneer in advancing the difficult but necessary argument of situating and centering Caribbean literature and criticism at the foundation of multicultural and postcolonial studies through an interdisciplinary, international, and intercultural manner, made possible by the author’s unique multicultural and transnational interest and experience. The Caribbean, more than any other region, has suffered from European imperialism – annihilation of the native population, piracy amongst the European powers, deracination and atrocities of the slave trade, and subsequent systems of indenture – but has received the least critical and international attention. Situating Caribbean Literature and Criticism in Multicultural and Postcolonial Studies argues that Caribbean criticism – shaped by the region’s socio-economic, political, and historical phenomena – has a more complex and significant marriage with postcolonial and multicultural studies than acknowledged by the international community. Caribbean scholars should not only seek to legitimize and publicize the marriage and its depth, but also expand the borders of its scholarship and protest its «disneyfication» and prostitution.

The Author: Seodial Frank H. Deena is Professor of Multicultural and Postcolonial Literature and Criticism at East Carolina University where he coordinates the Graduate Multicultural and Transnational Literatures Program and teaches multicultural, world, postcolonial, African American, and Caribbean literature, as well as the Bible as literature. He received his Ph.D. in literature and criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and his undergraduate degree from the University of Guyana. He has published widely in professional journals and has contributed chapters to several edited collections. He is the author of Canonization, Colonization, Decolonization: A Comparative Study of Political and Critical Works by Minority Writers (Peter Lang, 2001), From Around the Globe: Secular Authors and Biblical Perspectives (2007), and Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Postmodern Cross-Sections and Intersections with the Bible, Literature, and Culture (forthcoming).