Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies (Second Language Learning and Teaching)

This edited collection explores the conjunction of multiculturalism and the self in literature and culture studies, and brings together essays by prominent researchers interested in literature and culture whose critical perspectives inform discussions of specific examples of multicultural contexts in which individuals and communities strive to maintain their identities.

The book is divided into two major parts, the first of which comprises literary representations of multiculturalism and discussions of its impasses and impacts in fictional circumstances. In turn, the second part primarily focuses on culture at large and real-life consequences. Taken together, the two complementary parts offer an illuminating and well-rounded overview of representations of multiculturalism in literature and contemporary culture from a variety of critical perspectives.

Leszek Drong is an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. He is the Head of the Department of Rhetoric in Culture and the Media and Director of the Centre for the Study of Minor Cultures. His major publications include: Disciplining the New Pragmatism: Theory, Rhetoric and the Ends of Literary Study (Peter Lang Verlag 2006) and Masks and Icons: Subjectivity in Post-Nietzschean Autobiography (Peter Lang Verlag 2001) as well as numerous essays concerned with autobiography, rhetoric, New Pragmatism (particularly Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish) and Irish fiction (James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Sebastian Barry, Robert McLiam Wilson).

Jacek Mydla is an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. He holds an MA in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Lublin and an MA in English from the University of Silesia, as well as a PhD anda post-doctoral degree in literary studies. He conducts research and lectures on the history of British literature, specifically Gothic fiction and drama, and theory of narrative. His book-length publications are: The Dramatic Potential of Time in Shakespeare (2002), Spectres of Shakespeare (2009), and The Shakespearean Tide (2012). Forthcoming is a book on the ghost stories of M.R. James. His current research interests include Romantic drama, British empiricism in the eighteenth century, and the uncanny and supernatural in fiction.

Małgorzata Poks, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. Her main interests concern spirituality, civil disobedience, Christian anarchism, contemporary US literature, US-Mexican border writing, and animal and environmental studies. She is the recipient of several international fellowships and has published widely in Poland and abroad. Her book Thomas Merton and Latin America: A Consonance of Voices was awarded the “Louie” by the International Thomas Merton Society.