English in a World of Strangers

This book explores core issues in the emerging field of World Anglophone Studies. It shows that traditional frameworks based on the colonial and imperial legacies of English need to be revised and extended to understand the complex adaptations, iterations, and incarnations of English in the contemporary world.

This book explores core issues in the emerging field of World Anglophone Studies. It shows that traditional frameworks based on the colonial and imperial legacies of English need to be revised and extended to understand the complex adaptations, iterations, and incarnations of English in the contemporary world.

The chapters in this volume make three significant interventions in the field:

• First, they showcase the emergence of Anglophone literatures and cultures in parts of the world not traditionally considered Anglophone – Cuba, the Arab world, the Balkan region, Vietnam, Algeria, and Belize, among others
• Second, they feature new zones of contact and creolization between Anglophone literatures, cultures, and languages such as Swahili, Santhali, Ojibway, and Hindi, as well as Anglophone representations of colonial encounters and contemporary experiences in non-Anglophone settings such as Cuba, Angola, and Algeria
• And finally, the volume turns to Anglophone literary and cultural productions on new platforms such as social media and Netflix and highlights the role of English in emergent sites of resistance involving women, Indigenous populations, queer and other non-heteronormative sexualities, as well as post-conflict societies

Mapping linguistic transgressions and the transmigration of cultural tropes between Englishes, vernaculars, and a wide variety of other languages with a rich set of case studies, this volume will be essential reading for courses such as world literatures in English, postcolonial studies, anglophone studies, literature and culture, Indian Ocean worlds, Global Englishes, and Global South studies.