phl101--projects

Laura Bohannan's Shakespeare in the Bush (her essay on-line)

Student Essays on Bohannan's Shakespeare in the Bush

Here are students' critical summaries of Bohannan's "Shakespeare in the Bush."
These 22 essays were written for Bill Paredes-Holt's spring 1998 on-line course entitled
ENG 306: Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Texas (Austin).
(When you click on the above address, you'll get the Students Web Page with a list of
of student names. Click on the student names and you'll get that student's web site
which will usually list a critical summary essay on "Shakespeare in the Bush.")

The following essays are students' responses to "Shakespeare in the Bush" which
were done in Bill Paredes-Holt's 1995 on-line Introduction to World Literature class at the University of Texas at Austin:
              Nancy Cheng's first reading response paper: "Analysis On Shakespeare in the Bush."
                                      and first research paper "Ibo Religions and Spiritual Beliefs" (in                                       relation to Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart.)
              Jae Lee's first paper "Importance of Elders in African Tribes" (compares Bohannan
                                      and Achebe on the concept of tribe.)

Scholarly Essays Referring to Shakespeare in the Bush

John D. Jinkner's Essay on Kenneth Good's "Into the Heart: One Man's Puruit of Love
                                       and Knowledge Among the Yanomama." (Scroll down to the tenth
                                       paragraph which treats Bohannan's essay.)
James W. Pipkin's One, and Yet Many  (this piece explores the "common ground" of multi-
                                       culturalism and includes a few paragraphs on Bohannan's essay.)
Herman C. Waetjen's 'Shakespeare in the Bush' and Encountering the Other in the                                        Hermeneutical Dialectic of Belonging and Distanciation (this essay                                        is quite theoretical at first;scroll down about half way and he begins to
                                       talk more directly about Bohannan's essay.)

On the Tiv People of Nigeria

Paul Bohannan's essay Beauty and Scarification Amongst the Tiv (1956).
Glen Davis Stone's "Predatory Sedentism" among the frontier Tiv (Washington University
                                    in St. Louis); an abstract of Stone's paper is available. Additional
                                    photos of the Tiv are also available here.
Marlene M. Martin's Cultural Summary of the Tiv.

Information On Nigeria

   Chinua Achebe's essay(?) The Trouble with Nigeria.
   African Studies at Penn's Nigeria Page (lists numerous web sites on Nigeria)
    Library of Congress' Country Studies (Nigeria) (extensive site on the county's profile and                                       history.)
   Nigerian Universities with e-mail links.
    George P. Landow's Contemporary Postcolonial and Postimperial Literature in English
                                      especially the page on Nigeria which includes geography, demography,
                                      history, religion, politics,etc.(Brown University).
   Norwegian Council for Africa's Index for Africa (Nigeria)
   Simon A. Rakov's Ethnicity in Nigeria.
   University of Texas at Austin Library's Map of Nigeria (This takes a little while to load.)
   Cora Agatucci's Map of Literary Africa (Nigerian writers include Chinua Achebe, Flora                                       Nwapa, Wole Soyinka, Buchi Emecheta, Olu Oguibe, Ken Saro-Wiwa,
                                      Niyi Osundare, and Ben Okri. I'd like to thank Ms. Agatucci for her
                                      extensive list of African links and African timetables.)
   Oguocha's Compilation of E-mail Sites, Addresses, and Providers in Nigeria.

On West African Storytellers (Griots and Griottes)

   Thomas A. Hale's Griots and Griottes (includes descriptions,maps,epics, and videos of
                                      griots and griottes.)
   Dani Kouyati's film Keita: The Heritage of the Griot (this is a summary of the film directed
                                      by Dani Kouyati.)

Materials on Traditional African Culture and Religions

Herbert M. Cole's's and Chike C. Aniakor's Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos.
A student's paper (Lesley at Univ. of Texas) on Achebe's Repesentation of the Native.
Julie Holmes' interview with Buchi Emecheta in The Voice.
Mark Horsey's The Demise of Traditional Religion in African Culture.
Simeon O. Ilesanmi's Religious Pluralism and the Nigerian State (review by Azim Nanji).
Chris Lowe's Talking about 'Tribe': Moving from Stereotypes toAnalysis.
Bill Zhu's (student paper) work on Achebe and African religion.
Kenneth Kojo Anti's Women in Traditional African Religions.
Meyer Fortes' Some Reflections on Ancestor Worship in Africa.
Igor Kopytoff's Ancestors as Elders in Africa.

Synopses of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Mary and Charles Lamb: Tales from Shakespeare - Hamlet (a delightfully cantankerous                                       synopsis from the Lambs -- located at Terry Gray's web site
                                      Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet)

A brief plot synopsis of Hamlet from Brigham Young University.

If you wish to study the play itself, here is an on-line version from The Complete Works
web site (maintained by Jeremy Hylton).

On Translating from One Culture to Another

Cora Agatucci's Towards New Models for Cross-cultural Reading and Interpretation
                           includes 1) An Arena of Learning and Change, 2) Reading (and Teaching)
                           as Cross-cultural Translation, and 3) Culture-contact Model of Reader
                           Response (Central Oregon Community College).

Doris Bachmann-Medick's Cultural Misunderstanding in Translation: Multicultural
                           Coexistence and Multicultural Conceptions of World Literature (Univ. of
                           Goettingen.).

Tobias Doering's Translating Cultures? Towards a Rhetoric of Cross-Cultural Com-
                                      munication (Freie Universitaet Berlin).

Thomas Hylland Ericksen's Multiculturalism, individualism, and human rights.

Wolgang Iser's On Translatability ( "This essay addresses the question of translat-
                                      ability as a key concept for understanding encounters between cultures
                                      and interactions within cultures. In this view, translatability implies
                                      translation of otherness without subsuming it under preconcieved notions.
                                      In conclusion, this essay proposes a cybernetic model of cultural
                                      understanding based on recursive looping." See aslo Eddie
                                      Yeghiayan's bibliography of Wolfgang Iser. On-line essays on Iser
                                      include the follwing by Alexandra Reese, Cari Anne Phillips, and Karen
                                      A. Saks.)

J. Hillis Miller's Studying English Literature in a Transnational University (UC,Irvine).

Christina Shaeffner's and Beverly Adab's The concept of the hybrid text in translation.

Wolfgang Welsch's Transculturality -- the puzzling form of cultures today (abstract) and                                       also his essay Reason and Transition: On the Concept of Trans-
                                      versal Reason (Otto-von-Guericke Universitaet, Magdeburg).

On the Problem of Language and Postcolonial Studies

Jennifer Margulis' and Peter Nowakoski's essay Language ( this piece from the Post-
                                      colonial Studies web site at Emory University positions the
                                      problem of language in the context of African identity after colonialism.
                                      See also the list of theorists and authors at this site.)

Student essays on language from the Postcolonial web site at Brown University include:
                                     Megan Behrent's Ngugi wa Thiong'o on the Language Question,
                                     Brandon Brown's Ayo Bamgbose on the Language Question, and
                                                 Subversion versus Rejection: Can Postcolonial Writers
                                                 Subvert the Codified Using the Language of the Empire?
                                                 and Braithwaite's 'Nation Language,' Saro-Wiwa, and Achebe
                                                 and Anthills of the Savannah and Languages of Wider
                                                 Communication.
                                     Jennifer Ellingson's The Theme of Language in Recent African Novels,
                                     Alaka Holla's  Post-colonial Residue

Theorists and critical terms from the Postcolonial web site at Brown University.

G.D.Killam's The Role of the Writer in a New Nation.
Jennifer Poulos' Intellectual Biography of Frantz Fanon (Emory University).
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature

On Narratology (the "science" of stories -- fictional, historical, and political)

D. F. Falluga's Graduate Seminar in Narrative Theory  (This is a bit difficult without a back-
                                   ground in the field; however, Falluga does provide a good guide to literary
                                   terms as well as an undergraduate introduction to critical theory.)
Andreas Kitzmann's What Is Narratology? (Notes from Kitzmann's course at the Language
                                   Institute in Sweden.)
Henry McDonald's The Narrative Act: Wittgenstein and Narratology (Univ. of Oklahoma).
Ellen Rooney's What's the Story: Feminist Theory, Narrative, Address.

Related Essays

                 Simeon O. Ilesanmi: Religious Pluralism and the Nigerian State.
                 Mary Lefkowitz (Not Out of Africa) debates Martin Bernal (Black Athena).
                                            See also Martin Bernal's essay Black Athena: The African and
                                            Levantine Roots of Greece.
                 Sope Maithufi: Fanon's African Ontology, Post-colonial Ideological Stage and
                                            the Liberation of Africa.
                 Obioma Nnaemeka: Feminism, rebellious women, and cultural boundaries:
                                            rereading Flora Nwapa and her compatriots.
                 Ropo Sekoni: The Historical Duty Awaiting the Yoruba in Today's Nigeria.
                 Ibrahim Sundiata: Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having.
                 Ngugi wa Thiong'o: The Allegory of the Cave: Language, Democracy, and a
                                            New World Order!
                 Olufemi Taiwo: Exorcising Hegel's Ghost: Africa's Challenge to Philosophy.
                 Rose Ure Mezu: Women in Achebe's World.
                 Kwasi Wiredu: Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Relgion.

Ethical and Cultural Relativism

John Dorbolo's web site on Cultural Relativism.
Ethics Updates web site has an extensive page on ethical relativism and includes essays
                 such as Hugh LaFollette's essay The Truth in Ethical Relativism and Ronald
                 Dworkin's essay Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It. Responses to
                 Dworkin's essay include Simon Blackburn's response, Michael Otsuka's
                 response, Nick Zangwill's response. Also listed is Dworkin's response to his
                 critics. The same web site also includes Richard Rorty's "Moral Universalism
                 and Economic Triage" as well as Yael Tamir's "Hands Off Clitoridectomy: What
                 Our Revulsion Reveals about Ourselves." (Responses to Tamir's article by
                 Martha Nussbaum, Jessica Neuwirth, Frances Kamm, and Robert George;                  Tamir's reply to the responses.)
Richard J. Bernstein's "Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and
                 Praxis."
Deal W. Hudson's Pluralism without Relativism: A Review of John Kekes' The Morality of
                Pluralism.
Journal of Anthropological Research (a special issue on human rights which includes abstracts                 of a number of articles on cultural relativism.)
Donald J. Puchalal's "The Ethics of Globalism."
Kelley L. Ross's Relativism (an examination of the concept of relativism).
Jeffrey Unerman's ( student at Thames Valley University, London) draft of a paper called
                 "Ethical Relativism: A Reason for International Differences in Social and
                 Environmental Accounting?"

Interviews

Tina Chen's and S.X. Goudie's Holders of the Word: An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee
Thomas Irmer's An Interview with Leslie Marmon Silko.

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Last revision: March 9, 1999
Please send comments or additional resource materials to Frank Edler ( fedler@mccneb.edu )