Lessons Learned
Asynchronous Session
Featured Studying ‘Power’ and ‘Balance’ through the Characters of Ged and Karna: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Supriya Baijal
This paper analyses Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Rashmirathi (The Charioteer of Rays, 1952), with a special focus on Ged and Karna.The questions of power and balance in conjunction with the two protagonists in these two texts is discussed. Focusing on works by authors from the East and the West, the paper draws a parallel in order to understand the persistent significance of such existential questions. Le Guin in A Wizard of Earthsea traces Ged’s quest and his confrontation with the Shadow. It is his acceptance of the Shadow that facilitates his understanding of the intricacies of power and balance that govern, both, Earthsea and the world we inhabit. Dinkar’s Rashmirathi revolves around Karna, one of the focal characters of the Indian epic, Mahabharata, and his existential/moral struggles.The text addresses the questions of power and balance through the choices that Karna makes over the course of this epic battle, and how they have larger ramifications for other people, as well as, for the outcome of the war.Through a cross-cultural comparison, the paper highlights how various narratives engage with the importance of maintaining power and balance in order for peace to prevail.The two authors’ construction of their main protagonists exemplifies this tussle as well as the disastrous consequences that ensue as a result of abuse of power/man’s hubris.
From Othering to Belonging: A Post-colonial Reading in Budi Darma's Orang Orang Bloomington, Umar Kayam's Seribu Kunang Kunang di Manhattan and Ida Ahdiah's Teman Empat Musim View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tri Pramesti
This paper considers the development in Indonesian literary works published in 1970s and 2000s in illustrating othering and belonging. Orang Orang Bloomington and Seribu Kunang Kunang di Manhattan, published in 1970s, illustrate the life of Indonesian students in the USA. The Indonesians act as outsiders because they do not really interact with the whites. In contrast, in Teman empat Musim, published in 2009, the author portrays herself as the I who is easy to enter into a friendship with women of various nations, including the Canadian whites. Her interaction with the whites allows her to learn more about their cultures and foods in a safe environment and on a common ground around the value of a meal and community. These three works are like non-fictions telling about the experience of Indonesian students interacting with Western culture and society. The metropolitan space in post-colonial study called the center becomes the part of obsessions and dreams of people from the once colonized land. Budi Darma, Umar Kayam and Ida Ahdiah wrote and observe the cities in which they live and the life in it. Through their works, they explore and represent Indonesians who lived there and their association with the whites. By applying postcolonial criticism, this study tries to see how Indonesia fictions recognize the close relationship between individual identity and cultural beliefs. In addition, this study uses qualitative methods in terms of close reading techniques in scrutinizing popular novels written by writers of Indonesian fiction.
A Ghazal of History: Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Woman and the Work of YA Fiction View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deborah Williams
Nnedi Okorafor’s “Nsibidi Scripts” trilogy centers on a young girl named Sunny Nwazue, who moves with her Nigerian family from New York to Aba, Nigeria, and discovers that she belongs to a magical secret community known as the Leopard People. Through Sunny’s adventures, Okorafor’s trilogy makes clear that war and climate crisis stem from the legacy of colonialism and unfettered capitalism, both of which view the world solely in terms of resources to be exploited. This paper focuses primarily on Akata Woman (2022), the third book in the series, in order to demonstrate how Okorafor’s speculative YA fictions intervene in global conversations about climate crisis and the Anthropocene. The novel centers on African rather than the Western history and emphasizes the importance of being a nimble, sophisticated reader, as necessitated by the enchanted object at the center of the novel—an iridescent Möbius-strip ghazal written by the giant spider Udide. As readers we are challenged to relinquish antiquated conceptions of nation and to re-imagine our relationship to the planet. Building from the discussion of Akata Woman, this paper also suggests that YA speculative fiction more generally offers essential guidance for navigating this moment of Anthropocenic crisis. YA speculative fiction is generally ignored by theorists of the Anthropocene but these novels perform—and often anticipate—precisely what these theorists call for: a reconceptualization of the human relationship to the planet, a willingness to embrace the nonhuman, and a cosmopolitan imagination that challenges orthodox narratives.
Bodies and Bridges: Métis Diaspora and Hybridity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Heather Simeney Mac Leod
The Indigenous Peoples of Canada have been separated by the Government of Canada into three distinct classifications—First Nations, Inuit, and the Métis. Unlike the First Nations and the Inuit, the Métis were not legally or politically considered Indigenous until 2016. The Supreme Court of Canada commented that Métis and Non-Status peoples have been subjected to a "jurisdictional wasteland." By examining Métis subjectivity within a constellation of contexts—the representational corporeality of Louis Riel, the plurality of the diaspora and nationhood of the Métis experience, and the trope of the Métis body as a bridge between cultures—these spaces of tension reveal the Métis as Sophie McCall asserts “belonging in more than one place, time, memory, and body.”
