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All Outputs (27)

Decolonizing the Global North university: Host-guest dynamics and the limits of hospitality (2024)
Journal Article
Lau, L., & Mendes, A. C. (in press). Decolonizing the Global North university: Host-guest dynamics and the limits of hospitality. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1177/14740222241251729

This article critically assesses the hospitality premise on which the project-practice of decolonizing the curriculum rests, investigating the texture and limitations of the hospitality that Global North universities seem willing to offer their many... Read More about Decolonizing the Global North university: Host-guest dynamics and the limits of hospitality.

Decolonising Medical Knowledge - the case of breast cancer and ethnicity in the UK. (2022)
Journal Article
Lau, L., Workman, S., & Thompson, M. (2022). Decolonising Medical Knowledge - the case of breast cancer and ethnicity in the UK. Journal of Cancer Policy, 36, Article 100365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcpo.2022.100365

National and global efforts have led to significant improvements in breast health and diagnosis, globally (Lukong, 2017). These achievements, however, are not even. Focusing on the case of breast cancer in the UK, we argue that enduring forms of medi... Read More about Decolonising Medical Knowledge - the case of breast cancer and ethnicity in the UK..

Hospitality and Amnesty: Aravind Adiga’s Narrative of Legal Liminality (2022)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2022). Hospitality and Amnesty: Aravind Adiga’s Narrative of Legal Liminality. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 1 - 17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2099940

Amnesty continues several of the social justice themes of precarity and subalternity (at times, a violent subaltern agency) of Aravind Adiga’s fiction, and its literary narrative centres again on criminal acts and the moral dilemma the protagonist fa... Read More about Hospitality and Amnesty: Aravind Adiga’s Narrative of Legal Liminality.

Geology uprooted! Decolonising the curriculum for geologists (2022)
Journal Article
Rogers, S., Lau, L., Dowey, N., Sheikh, H., & Williams, R. (2022). Geology uprooted! Decolonising the curriculum for geologists. Geoscience Communication, 5(3), 189 - 204. https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-5-189-2022

Geology is colonial. It has a colonial past and a colonial present. Most of the knowledge that we accept as the modern discipline of geology was founded during the height of the post-1700 European empire's colonial expansion. Knowledge is not neutral... Read More about Geology uprooted! Decolonising the curriculum for geologists.

Wither the plurality of decolonising the curriculum? Safe spaces and identitarian politics in the arts and humanities classroom (2022)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2022). Wither the plurality of decolonising the curriculum? Safe spaces and identitarian politics in the arts and humanities classroom. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 21(3), 223-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/14740222221100711

Contributing to the debate on decolonising the curriculum, this reflective article questions: What does a safe space in a decolonised classroom mean? For whom is it safe? And at what cost? Must we redraw the parameters of 'safe'? Prompted by a real-l... Read More about Wither the plurality of decolonising the curriculum? Safe spaces and identitarian politics in the arts and humanities classroom.

Gendered Rage (2022)
Journal Article
Lau, L., & Mendes, A. (2022). Gendered Rage. https://doi.org/10.5744/jgps.2021.0005

<jats:p>This article brings the concept of anger, particularly gendered anger, to bear on a postcolonial and intersectional reading of the apparent ragelessness of working-class Indian women who act as surrogates in the international commercialgestat... Read More about Gendered Rage.

No Longer Just Victims: New Fiction and New Gender Roles (2021)
Book Chapter
lau, L. (2021). No Longer Just Victims: New Fiction and New Gender Roles. In Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers. Modern Language Association

Global and cosmopolitan since the late nineteenth century, anglophone South Asian women’s writing has flourished in many genres and locations, encompassing diverse works linked by issues of language, geography, history, culture, gender, and literary... Read More about No Longer Just Victims: New Fiction and New Gender Roles.

Twenty-First-Century Antigones: The Postcolonial Woman Shaped by 9/11 in Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire (2021)
Journal Article
Lau, L., & Mendes, A. (2021). Twenty-First-Century Antigones: The Postcolonial Woman Shaped by 9/11 in Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire. Studies in the Novel, 54 - 68. https://doi.org/10.1353/sdn.2021.0004

Set in the early 2010s, the backdrop of Kamila Shamsie's novel Home Fire (2017) is a familiar one to contemporary readers, colored by the rise of farright populist movements and the increase in anti-Muslim initiatives. This article examines how the n... Read More about Twenty-First-Century Antigones: The Postcolonial Woman Shaped by 9/11 in Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire.

The precarious lives of India’s Others: The creativity of precarity in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2019)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2019). The precarious lives of India’s Others: The creativity of precarity in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 1 - 13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2019.1683758

This article traces the agency of Arundhati Roy’s precariat in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. In her novel, Roy focuses on how those in the most precarious of social positions manage to retain a toehold within the system by defiant creativity, lat... Read More about The precarious lives of India’s Others: The creativity of precarity in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Urban redevelopment, the new logics of expulsion, and individual precarity in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius and Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower (2019)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2019). Urban redevelopment, the new logics of expulsion, and individual precarity in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius and Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower. cultural geographies, 147447401987165 - 147447401987165. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474019871653

Drawing on Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film Aquarius (2016) and Aravind Adiga’s novel Last Man in Tower (2011), this article is concerned with the impact on individuals and communities of forms of impersonal, systemic violence resulting from neoliberal a... Read More about Urban redevelopment, the new logics of expulsion, and individual precarity in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius and Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower.

A postcolonial framing of international commercial gestational surrogacy in India: Re-orientalisms and power differentials in Meera Syal’s The House of Hidden Mothers (2019)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2019). A postcolonial framing of international commercial gestational surrogacy in India: Re-orientalisms and power differentials in Meera Syal’s The House of Hidden Mothers. Interventions, 318-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2018.1558094

The branding and marketing of post-millennial India as a global service provider has been relentless. Indian cities have now been de-exoticized from their previous association to elephants, snake-charmers, and slums, and are now being marketed as the... Read More about A postcolonial framing of international commercial gestational surrogacy in India: Re-orientalisms and power differentials in Meera Syal’s The House of Hidden Mothers.

Hospitality and Re-Orientalist Thresholds: Amit Chaudhuri Writes Back to India (2019)
Journal Article
Lau. (2019). Hospitality and Re-Orientalist Thresholds: Amit Chaudhuri Writes Back to India. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2018.1517638

In times of heightened, no-longer-linear migratory flows, when migrations oscillate and even double back on their own routes, this article interrogates the unwritten social contract of hospitality between host and guest. Taking as a case study Amit C... Read More about Hospitality and Re-Orientalist Thresholds: Amit Chaudhuri Writes Back to India.

Romancing the other: Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2019)
Journal Article
Lau. (2019). Romancing the other: Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989418820701

Arundhati Roy’s second and latest novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness — which took her ten years to write — is crammed full of misfits and outsiders, the flotsam and jetsam of India’s complex, stratified society. The novel is inhabited by cohorts... Read More about Romancing the other: Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

The conjunctural spaces of ‘new India’: imagined geographies of 2010s India in representations by returnee migrants (2018)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2018). The conjunctural spaces of ‘new India’: imagined geographies of 2010s India in representations by returnee migrants. cultural geographies, https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474018786033

Focusing on returnee Indian authors, this article contributes to analytical perspectives on imagined geographies. We map the imagined geographies of 2010s Delhi and India as experienced and created by Indian returnee migrant authors, drawing on the h... Read More about The conjunctural spaces of ‘new India’: imagined geographies of 2010s India in representations by returnee migrants.

Re-orientalism and Representation: Aman Sethi Talks About Delhi (2018)
Journal Article
Lau. (2018). Re-orientalism and Representation: Aman Sethi Talks About Delhi. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 372-386. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2018.1461984

In the (re)presentation of India by Indian authors writing in English there is an overlooked, long-standing tradition of sterling commentaries produced by social analysts. In the best of that tradition which blurs the divide between the literary and... Read More about Re-orientalism and Representation: Aman Sethi Talks About Delhi.

A postcolonial framing of Indian commercial surrogacy: issues, representations, and orientalisms (2018)
Journal Article
Lau. (2018). A postcolonial framing of Indian commercial surrogacy: issues, representations, and orientalisms. Gender, Place and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1471047

Although only legalised in 2002, Indian commercial gestational surrogacy (CGS) is an industry worth an estimated 2.3 billion USD to India at its height. Not only has this contentious topic been researched extensively from a spectrum of academic angle... Read More about A postcolonial framing of Indian commercial surrogacy: issues, representations, and orientalisms.

Post-9/11 re-orientalism: Confrontation and conciliation in Mohsin Hamid’s and Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2018)
Journal Article
Mendes, A., & Lau, L. (2018). Post-9/11 re-orientalism: Confrontation and conciliation in Mohsin Hamid’s and Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 78-91. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989416631791

This article offers a comparative reading of the novel and film adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, looking at the ways these texts represent changing Western public perceptions towards Pakistan and vice-versa along the temporal axis 2001–200... Read More about Post-9/11 re-orientalism: Confrontation and conciliation in Mohsin Hamid’s and Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

The Sinhalese Diaspora: New Directions of Sri Lankan Diasporic Writing. (2016)
Journal Article
Lau. (2016). The Sinhalese Diaspora: New Directions of Sri Lankan Diasporic Writing. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2016.1111125

This article investigates a particular sub-section of South Asian literature in English, namely, contemporary diasporic social realism fiction by Sri Lankan authors. It not only explores the little-discussed Sri Lankan Sinhalese diaspora which is usu... Read More about The Sinhalese Diaspora: New Directions of Sri Lankan Diasporic Writing..

Indian Writing in English and Issues of Visual Representation: Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover (2015)
Book
Lau, L., & Varughese, E. D. (2015). Indian Writing in English and Issues of Visual Representation: Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover. (1). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474223

This book examines the use of book covers as marketing devices, asking what exactly they communicate to their readers and buyers, and what images they associate with a genre and create about a culture. Focusing on Indian women's writing in English, i... Read More about Indian Writing in English and Issues of Visual Representation: Judging a Book by More Than Its Cover.