Transoceanic and Transmedial Imaginaries in the Indian Ocean (Routledge Series on the Indian Ocean and Trans-Asia)

Transoceanic and Transmedial Imaginaries in the Indian Ocean explores multiple aesthetic relations constantly in flux, which construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct the Indian Ocean. It addresses the questions of how the arts – music, literature, visual art, and performance – relate to and dynamically create imaginaries of the Indian Ocean as a transcontinental space.

Contributors focus on the relations and interference of various art forms, including literature, music, visual arts, installations, and performance as well as local crafts, and cross the boundaries of language(s), which have often separated views of the Indian Ocean along the monolingual logic of disciplines. This book takes a transmedial perspective and studies the Indian Ocean as a fluid space, in which languages, images, music, and dance movements have been traveling and influencing each other for centuries. It analyzes how music, verbal, audiovisual, or performative arts use imagery, sound, narrative, and performances to make alternative relations across space and time and to make transoceanic visions and histories perceptible. Focusing on the aesthetic approach, this book combines various formats to capture the complex and often complementary interconnectedness of different stories told using various media, creating different atmospheres and touching other senses.

This book is a novel contribution to the study of the Indian Ocean and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary readership, including literature, cultural studies, visual arts, performance, anthropology, and history, but also social geography, linguistics, and music studies.

Ute Fendler holds the Chair in “Romance Literary and Comparative Studies” at the University of Bayreuth and is the deputy spokesperson of the “Africa Multiple” Cluster of Excellence. Her current research projects focus on the Black Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. She recently coedited the volume Africa‑Asia – Multifaceted Engagement in the Contemporary World (2024).

Clarissa Vierke is Professor of Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth. Her research focuses on Swahili poetry, Islamic manuscript cultures, and literary entanglements across the Indian Ocean. She co‑edited In This Fragile World (2023) and is PI of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence.