Can Mennonite literature move beyond its longstanding preoccupation with cultural identity?
Join editor Robert Zacharias and contributors Hildi Froese Tiessen, Paul Tiessen, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Ann Hostetler, Jeff Gundy, and Royden Loewen for an evening of conversation.
For decades, the field of Mennonite literature has been dominated by the question of Mennonite identity. After Identity offers a platform for a reappraisal of Mennonite literature and literary criticism and a reflection of current conversations in the field about Mennonite literary discourse and cultural identity.
Twelve contributors explore the histories and contexts that have informed the focus on identity in Mennonite literature, even as that identity is reread, reframed, and expanded. The interdisciplinary essays ask what is at stake in this ongoing preoccupation with identity and explore the potential for a move towards a truly post-identity literature.
Robert Zacharias is a Visiting Scholar with the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. As of July 1, 2016, he will be an Assistant Professor in the English Department at York University.
Other contributors include Ervin Beck, Di Brandt, Daniel Shank Cruz, Jeff Gundy, Ann Hostetler, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Royden Loewen, Jesse Nathan, Magdalene Redekop, Hildi Froese Tiessen, and Paul Tiessen.