Recent Publications
The scholars and creative writers of Minnesota’s English faculty publish books that kickstart conversations and shift paradigms. Championed by leading presses, their work expands and enhances their fields.
Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore’s walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl. Profoundly intimate and propulsive, The Return of Faraz Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose to protect, and at what price?
Highlights celebrated and new voices that, as editor Peter Campion says, share “a particular combination of openness and intention, curiosity and assertion.” Indeed, the authors included in this anthology “venture out onto the skinny branches of their own sensibilities,” in Campion’s words. This book, though, is not just an anthology of some inspired experimental writing but an experimental anthology in form. Being unbound—physically and philosophically—allows the pieces included here to live in any order, to find the fit that works best for any reader, to be read randomly, sequentially, or thematically. With a foreword and extraordinary book photography by Catherine Gass, The Experiment Will Not Be Bound is, to a degree, an homage to William H. Gass.
After a messy breakup leaves him alone and miserable, Forest just wants to work in his gym and maybe webcam with a cute guy after work. He’s worked hard on this body for a reason. Of course with his luck, he’d find a guy with wings. Wings! Still, Grant is gorgeous and intriguing. Forest would be a fool to let a little thing like wings get in the way of learning more about him. He deserves a distraction from the arrogant bodybuilder who’s opening a new gym in competition with his own. He doesn’t count on getting lost in the local gay bathhouse, being chased through town naked, and certainly not discovering that Grant is a fairy and there’s a magical war brewing
Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K’s invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. A heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.
The first comprehensive and systematic study of Nigerian hip-hop. Nigerian, or Naija, hip-hop has existed for close to 45 years, and throughout its rich history has been influenced by not only imperialist media flows but also enduring discourses of African anti-colonialism and pan-Africanism and the long cultural traffic between Africa and the African diaspora. NIgerian Hip-Hop directs attention to the culture's provocative meditations on the afterlives of slavery and colonialism. Gbogi tracks these meditations across a wide range of sources, including lyrics, music videos, cover arts, liner notes, photographs, social media, archival materials, and oral interviews. He examines them closely for what they reveal about the contemporary trajectories of African popular culture and youth resistance.
From the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of The Women Could Fly, a dazzling novel about two brilliant sisters and what happens to their undeniable bond when a mysterious and possibly perilous new world beckons. On an ordinary summer morning, the world is changed by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that seemingly lead to another world. Ayanna and Olivia, two Black Midwestern teens—and twin sisters—have different ideas of what may lie in the world beyond. But will their personal bond endure such wanton exploration? And when one of them goes missing, will the other find solace on her own? And will she uncover the circumstances of what truly happened to her once constant companion and best friend?
Reminiscent of the works of Margaret Atwood, Shirley Jackson, and Octavia Butler, a biting social commentary from the acclaimed author of Lakewood that speaks to our times—a piercing dystopian novel about the unbreakable bond between a young woman and her mysterious mother, set in a world in which witches are real and single women are closely monitored. Fourteen years have passed since her mother’s disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30—or enroll in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she’s offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.
A collection of talks that poet and National Book Award finalist Douglas Kearney presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2020 and 2021. As kinetic on the page as they are in person, these lectures offer an urgent critique of the intersections between violence and entertainment, interrogating the ways in which poetry, humor, visual art, music, pop culture, and performance alternately uphold and subvert this violence. With genius precision and an avant-garde sensibility, Kearney examines the nuances around Black visibility and its aestheticization. In myriad ways, Optic Subwoof is a book that establishes Kearney as one of the most dynamic writers and thinkers of the twenty-first century.
In this book, Josephine Lee looks at the intertwined racial representations of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American theater. In minstrelsy, melodrama, vaudeville, and musicals, both white and African American performers enacted blackface characterizations alongside oriental stereotypes of opulence and deception, comic servitude, and exotic sexuality. Lee shows how blackface types were often associated with working-class masculinity and the development of a nativist white racial identity for European immigrants, while the oriental marked what was culturally coded as foreign, feminized, and ornamental... These interlocking cross-racial impersonations offer fascinating insights into habits of racial representation both inside and outside the theater.
While most discussions of race in American theater emphasize the representation of race mainly in terms of character, plot, and action, Race in American Musical Theater highlights elements of theatrical production and reception that are particular to musical theater. This introductory volume looks at the recurrence of particular storylines, as well as casting practices, the history of the chorus line, and the popularity of recent shows such as Hamilton. Moving from key examples such as Show Boat! and South Pacific through to all-Black musicals such as Dreamgirls, Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, and Jelly's Last Jam, this concise study serves as a critical survey of how race is presented in the American musical theater canon.
This introduction to Asian American theatre charts ten of the most pivotal moments in the history of the Asian diaspora in the USA and how those moments have been reflected in theatre. Designed for weekly use on Asian American theatre courses, ten chosen milestones move chronologically from the earliest contact between Japan and the West through the impact of the Vietnam War and the resurgent 'yellow peril' hysteria of COVID-19. Each chapter emphasizes common questions of how racial identities and relationships are understood in everyday life as well as represented on the theatrical stage and in popular culture.
The history of captivity in the early modern Mediterranean has been studied exclusively through European and Ottoman/Turkish sources. But an extensive archive has survived in Arabic describing the experiences of Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jews in European captivity. British and French fleets seized large numbers of captives. This study continues the research into the Arabic archive by introducing further accounts about captivity by European pirates and privateers, showing how the Mediterranean became the scene of Christian masters and Arabic-speaking slaves.
Held is a collection about living in and with the consequences of terrible mistakes and contemplates our collective experiences of loss in an age of climate change and mass extinctions, as well as more personal tragedies. Each essay in this book describes a remarkable instance of symbiotic mutualism: bobtail squid host glow-in-the-dark bacteria behind their eyes so they can camouflage with moonlight on the water; there is a surprisingly erotic encounter between ants and a rove beetle; beavers and willow trees together turn deserts to verdant wetlands; and many more. To read Held is to be reminded of one’s humanity and of our interconnectedness with the world that surrounds us.
Spanning decades and continents, and covering the rich field of poets writing today, this book shows how to read, explicate, and write poetry. Bringing together a comprehensive craft guide with a carefully collated anthology showcasing the (existing) limits of what is possible in poetry, this text explores how poetry since the 20th century has embraced traditional structures, borrowed from other disciplines, and invented wildly new forms. With close readings, writing prompts, excerpts of interviews from key figures in the field, and a supplementary companion website, this is the definitive text for any poet looking to continue their poetic journey.
By turns heartfelt and witty, accessible and engaging, the book explores how Wendell Berry, Carlo Petrini, and Alice Waters have changed America’s relationship with food over the past fifty years. Philippon weighs the legacy of each of these writers and activists while planting and harvesting vegetables in central Wisconsin, speaking with growers and food producers in northern Italy, and visiting with chefs and restaurateurs in southeastern France. Following Berry, Petrini, and Waters in pursuit of his own “ideal meal,” Philippon considers what a sustainable food system might look like and what role writing can play in making it a reality.
This book presents a passionate literary argument for Beowulf as a searching and subtle exploration of the human presence. Seamus Heaney praised Beowulf as "a work of the greatest imaginative vitality": how is that true? The poem's current scholarly obsessions and its popular reception have obscured the fact that this untitled and anonymous 3182-line poem from Anglo-Saxon England is a powerful and enduring work of world literature. Beowulf is an early medieval exercise in humanism: it dramatizes, in varied and complex ways, the conflict between human autonomy and the "mind-forg'd manacles" of the world. The poem is as relevant and moving to any reader today as it was during the early Middle Ages. This book serves both as an invitation and introduction to the poem as well as an intervention in its current scholarly context.
For four centuries Anne Shakespeare, née Hathaway, has been in her famous husband’s shadow. It’s high time she had a book of her own. This bold and ground-breaking volume places her centre-stage and encourages us to re-imagine Anne in her own right, and afresh for our own times. Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare brings together 67 newly-commissioned poems, one for each year of Anne’s life. Here, too, are ten poems of the past. Brave, moving, liberating, and witty, Anne-thology brings together Anne’s past and present and is a bold beacon, illuminating the enduring legacy of this remarkable woman for future generations.
Jason Fitger may be the last faculty member the dean wants for the job, but he’s the only professor available to chaperone Payne University’s annual “Experience: Abroad” (he has long been on the record objecting to the absurd and gratuitous colon between the words) occurring during the three weeks of winter term. Through a sea of troubles—personal, institutional, and international—the gimlet-eyed, acid-tongued Fitger strives to navigate safe passage for all concerned, revealing much about the essential need for human connection and the sometimes surprising places in which it is found.