Publications

Publications by Prof. Dr. Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn

Games of Empires

Karen Aydin, Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn, Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen, and Mario Ziegler, eds. Games of Empires: Kulturhistorische Konnotationen Von Brettspielen in Transnationalen Und Imperialen Kontexten. Transcultural Anglophone Studies Series Vol. 5. Berlin, Muenster, Vienna, Zurich, London: LIT P, 2018. Brettspiele gehören zu den ältesten kulturellen Praktiken. Sie nehmen mit ihrer spezifischen Form unter den Spielen eine besondere Rolle ein. Zugleich gehört das "Anderssein" im Unterschied zum gewöhnlichen Leben auch zu ihren Grundmerkmalen. In Brettspielen werden Realitäten abgebildet, aber auch neu konstruiert. Sechzehn Beiträge untersuchen, wie sich imperiale Herrschaftsformen unterschiedlicher Epochen auf die Spielkulturen auswirken, wie weit Brettspiele die Mentalität einer Gesellschaft befestigen und welche Reflexionen die Literatur zu ihrer gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung bietet.

Excerpts can be read online for free

 

Transcultural Anglophone Studies

Ghosh-Schellhorn, Martina. Transcultural Anglophone Studies. An Introduction. Transcultural Anglophone Studies Series Vol. 4. Berlin, Muenster, Vienna, Zurich, London: LIT P, 2018.

Transcultural Anglophone Studies (TAS) engages with the cultural production of speakers of World English in any part of the former British Empire, and the migrational diasporas resulting thereof. Anglophone texts - in print or other media - have had a tremendous impact despite their relatively `belated' entry to the cultural field. Since TAS forms a vast, heteronomous research area, this Introduction is a first guide for students and researchers. In providing analytical tools for engaging with these exceptional texts, it situates them in the larger context of globalization and neocolonialism. Excerpts can be read online for free

 

 

Jouer selon les règles du jeu - Playing by the Rules of the Game - Spielen nach den Spielregeln

Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn, Roland Marti, eds.  Jouer selon les règles du jeu - Playing by the Rules of the Game - Spielen nach den Spielregeln. Transcultural Anglophone Studies 2. Berlin, Muenster, Vienna, Zurich, London: LIT P, 2008.

Games form an integral part of life and the rules that determine how they are to be played provide us with rich insights into the specific nature of cultures. Comprising theoretical, philosophical, and legal discussions, the contexts of game playing are comprehensively examined in essays which range widely through time and space. In focussing on the topic of game playing this volume of essays - which stems from a Transcultura symposium on the transcultural key-concept of "the rules of the game" - engages in a fresh way with the field of sports as a unique and yet shared cultural phenomenon. Excerpts can be read online for free

 

 

Steep Stairs to Myself - Transitional Autobiography. Reflections - Literatures in English outside Britain and the USA

Ghosh-Schellhorn, Martina. Steep Stairs to Myself - Transitional Autobiography. Reflections - Literatures in English outside Britain and the USA Vol. 19. Trier: VWT, 2008.

It has been customary to speak of the British colonial project and its present-day reverberations in terms of cultural clash and ensuing resistance on the part of the colonised. In challenging that perspective, this study regards the concept of hybridity as historically pertinent to the first contact situation, and thus moves beyond an intercultural premise to a transcultural one in addressing the effects of Anglicisation. It posits that the contemporary parameters of identity formation in the colonially-incepted Anglophone world can best be understood as deriving from the state of "transitionality". Since the most comprehensive treatment of "transitional identity" is found in the self-narratives of writers located in transitionality, the genre of autobiography forms the focus of this study. As canonical autobiography theory is informed by premises found to have little relevance to "transitionality", these highly individuated autobiographies, which stem moreover from a wide variety of global regions, are here analysed with the help of a fresh theory of autobiography. As a result, the significance of "transitional autobiography", not only for reconsidering postcolonial theory, but also for re-conceptualisation of literary self-representation, has been brought to the fore.

 

Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries

Ghosh-Schellhorn, Martina, ed., (assist. V. Alexander): Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries. Transcultural Anglophone Studies 1. Berlin, Muenster, Vienna, Zurich, London: LIT P, 2006.

Prominent scholars in literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, media studies, theatre production, and translation challenge the centre-periphery dichotomy used as a paradigm for relations between colonizers and their erstwhile subjects in this collection of critical interventions.
Focussing on India and its diaspora(s) in western industrialized nations and former British colonies, this volume engages with topics of centrality and/or peripherality, particularly in the context of Anglophone Indian writing; the Indian languages; Indian film as art and popular culture; cross-cultural Shakespeare; diasporic pedagogy; and transcultural identity.

Excerpts can be read online for free

 

Writing Women Across Borders and Categories

Ghosh-Schellhorn, Martina, ed. Writing Women Across Borders and Categories. Hallenser Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 6. Berlin, Muenster, Vienna, Zurich, London: LIT P, 2000.

Generally held to be rigid, borders and categories are nonetheless expanded when those bounded by the demarcations of hegemony, challenge its strictures. Significant instances of this constructive transgression can be found in the women's writing with which this collection of essays by international critics engages. Whereas in travel writing by women (Sarah Hobson, Dervla Murphy, Jan Morris) `transgression' is seen to have settled into a familiar strategy, in autobiography (Ann Fanshawe. Margaret Cavendish, Christine Brooke-Rose), cultural analysis (Virginia Woolf, Marianna Torgovnick, Donna Haraway), and fiction (Michelle Cliff, Jeanette Winterson, Ellen Galford, Fiona Cooper), women have succeeded in creating an innovative space for themselves. Excerpts can be read online for free

 

Anthony Burgess: A Study in Character

Ghosh-Schellhorn, Martina, ed. Anthony Burgess: A Study in Character. Frankfurt/M., New York: Peter Lang, 1986.

Anthony Burgess is an author who is on the verge of arriving on the international scene. This study can lay claim to originality since it approaches Burgess' fiction from the novel angle of a typology of his ouevre based on characterization. Character, the most important aspect of Burgess' novels, is understood as being the means Burgess chooses to establish his interpretation of earthly existence through the thematic-structuring principle of the quest. In novels ranging from the time of Christ to the end of the world, his protagonists are types of representative man, who at the end of their quests, come to accept the presence of good and evil in themselves, and to realize that this mirrors the duality of the duoverse in which they live.