As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, bringing the transgression of the ontological boundary between the narrated world and the world of the recipient into focus. These diverse transgressions - medial and ontological - are the subject of this transdisciplinary compendium, which covers the subject in an interdisciplinary way from various perspectives: game studies and media studies, but also sociology and psychology, to take into account the great influence of storytelling on social discourses and human behavior.

Which is the identity of a traveler who is constantly on the move between cultures and languages? What happens with stories when they are transmitted from one place to another, when they are retold, remade, translated and re-translated? What happens with the scholars themselves, when they try to grapple with the kaleidoscopic diversity of human expression in a constantly changing world? These and related questions are explored in the chapters of this collection. Its overall topic, narratives that pass over national, language and ethnical borders includes studies about transcultural novels, poetry, drama, and the narratives of journalism. There is a broad geographic diversity, not only in the collection as a whole, but also in each of the single contributions. This in turn demands a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches, which cover a spectrum of concepts from such different sources as post-colonial studies, linguistics, religion, aesthetics, art, and media studies, often going beyond the well-known Western frameworks. The works of authors like Miriam Toews, Yoko Tawada, Javier Moreno, Leila Abouela, Marguerite Duras, Kyoko Mori, Francesca Duranti, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Rībi Hideo, and François Cheng are studied from a variety of perspectives. Other chapters deal with code-switching in West African novels, border crossing in the Japanese noh drama, translational anthologies of Italian literature, urban legends on the US-Mexico border, migration in German children's books, and war trauma in poetry. Most of the chapters are case studies of specific works and authors, and may thus be of interest, not only for specialists, but also for the general reader.

This interdisciplinary volume written by experienced scholars in border studies explores the political role of images and narratives addressing borders, borderscapes and migration. The volume offers new methodologies to approach the political aesthetics of the border and related issues such as borderland identities and border-crossings.

Borders separate but also connect self and other, and literary texts not only enact these bordering processes, but form part of such processes. This book gestures towards a borderless world, stepping, as it were, with thousand-mile boots from south to north (even across the Atlantic), from South Africa to Scandinavia. It also shows how literary texts model and remodel borders and bordering processes in rich and meaningful local contexts. The essays assembled here analyse the crossing and negotiation of borders and boundaries in works by Nadine Gordimer, Ingrid Winterbach, Deneys Reitz, Janet Suzman, Marlene van Niekerk, A.S. Byatt, Thomas Harris, Frank A. Jenssen, Eben Venter, Antjie Krog, and others under different signs or conceptual points of attraction. These signs include a spiritual turn, eventfulness, self-understanding, ethnic and linguistic mobilization, performative chronotopes, the grotesque, the carceral, the rhetorical, and the interstitial. Contributors: Ileana Dimitriu, Heilna du Plooy, John Gouws, Anne Heith, Lida Krüger, Susan Meyer, Adéle Nel, Ellen Rees, Johan Schimanski, Tony Ullyatt, Phil van Schalkwyk, Hein Viljoen.

This book is a study of the short story, one of the widest taught genres in English literature, from an innovative methodological perspective. Both liminality and the short story are well-researched phenomena, but the combination of both is not frequent. This book discusses the relevance of the concept of liminality for the short story genre and for short story cycles, emphasizing theoretical perspectives, methodological relevance and applicability. Liminality as a concept of demarcation and mediation between different processual stages, spatial complexes, and inner states is of obvious importance in an age of global mobility, digital networking, and interethnic transnationality. Over the last decade, many symposia, exhibitions, art, and publications have been produced which thematize liminality, covering a wide range of disciplines including literary, geographical, psychological and ethnicity studies. Liminal structuring is an essential aspect of the aesthetic composition of short stories and the cultural messages they convey. On account of its very brevity and episodic structure, the generic liminality of the short story privileges the depiction of transitional situations and fleeting moments of crisis or decision. It also addresses the moral transgressions, heterotopic orders, and forms of ambivalent self-reflection negotiated within the short story's confines. This innovative collection focuses on both the liminality of the short story and on liminality in the short story.

“This is a book of stories told by adolescents and adults about teaching and learning. . . . Puzzlement, wonder, curiosity, disruption, and distress mark the emotions of all the storytellers here.” —From the Foreword by Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University “Crossing Boundaries is a must-read for anyone interested in improving the academic achievements and enhancing the literacy practices of marginalized students.” —Beverly Moss, The Ohio State University “This book will shake the ‘common’ and reshape the ‘knowledge’ we have about the passion and potential of students in urban schools.” —JoBeth Allen, University of Georgia In her new book, Valerie Kinloch, award-winning author of Harlem on Our Minds, sheds light on the ways urban youth engage in “meaning-making” experiences as a way to assert critical, creative, and highly sophisticated perspectives on teaching, learning, and survival. Kinloch rejects deficit models that have traditionally defined the literacy abilities of students of color, especially African American and Latino/a youth. In contrast, she “crosses boundaries” to listen to the voices of students attending high school in New York City’s Harlem community. In Crossing Boundaries, Kinloch uses a critical teacher-researcher lens to propose new directions for youth literacies and achievements. The text features examples of classroom engagements, student writings and presentations, discussions of texts and current events, and conversations on skills, process, achievement, and underachievement. Valerie Kinloch is associate professor in literacy studies in the School of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. Her other books are Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth and Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community. All royalties go to the Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color grant and mentoring program sponsored through the National Council of Teachers of English

This book represents a contribution to both border studies and short story studies. In today’s world, there is ample evidence of the return of borders worldwide: as material reality, as a concept, and as a way of thinking. This collection of critical essays focuses on the ways in which the contemporary British short story mirrors, questions and engages with border issues in national and individual life. At the same time, the concept of the border, as well as neighbouring notions of liminality and intersectionality, is used to illuminate the short story’s unique aesthetic potential. The first section, “Geopolitics and Grievable Lives”, includes chapters that address the various ways in which contemporary stories engage with our newly bordered world and borders within contemporary Britain. The second section examines how British short stories engage with “Ethnicity and Liminal Identities”, while the third, “Animal Encounters and Metamorphic Bodies”, focuses on stories concerned with epistemological borders and borderlands of existence and identity. Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the varied and complex ways in which British short stories in the twenty-first century engage with the concept of the border.