Reading Mennonite Writing : : A Study in Minor Transnationalism / / Robert Zacharias.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Zacharias, Robert,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (266 p.)

Mennonite literature has long been viewed as an expression of community identity. However, scholars in Mennonite literary studies have urged a reconsideration of the field’s past and a reconceptualization of its future. This is exactly what Reading Mennonite Writing does.Drawing on the transnational turn in literary studies, Robert Zacharias positions Mennonite literature in North America as “a mode of circulation and reading” rather than an expression of a distinct community. He tests this reframing with a series of methodological experiments that open new avenues of critical engagement with the field’s unique configuration of faith-based intercultural difference. These include cross-sectional readings in nonnarrative literary history, archival readings of transatlantic multilingual diaries, Canadian rewritings of Latin American film’s deployment of Mennonite theology as fantasy, an examination of the fetishistic structure of ethnicity as a “thing” that has enabled Mennonite identity to function in a post-identity age, and, finally, a tentative reinvestment in ideals of Mennonite community via the surprising routes of queerness and speculative fiction. In so doing, Zacharias presents Mennonite fiction, poetry, and film criticism in North America as a useful case study in the shifting position of minor literatures in the wake of the transnational turn.Theoretically sophisticated, this study of minor transnationalism will appeal to specialists in Mennonite literature and to scholars working in the broader field of transnational literary studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Mennonite Literature as a Case Study in Minor Transnationalism -- Chapter 1. 1986 -- Chapter 2. A Russian Dance of Death -- Chapter 3. The Mennonite Thing -- Chapter 4. Irma Voth Writes Back to Silent Light -- Chapter 5. Endure -- Conclusion. Reading Toward the Future of Mennonite Writing -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index