Immigrants in the Metropolis

• Thesis title in Czech: Imigranti v metropoli
• Thesis title in English: Immigrants in the Metropolis
• Key words: Monica Ali, Meera Syal, Zadie Smith, britský román, diaspora, hybridita, kultura, metropole, město
• English key words: Monica Ali, Meera Syal, Zadie Smith, British novel, diaspora, hybridity, culture, metropolis, city
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2013/2014
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 28.05.2014
• Date of assignment: 28.05.2014
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 11.06.2014
• Date and time of defence: 09.09.2015 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 06.08.2015
• Date of proceeded defence: 09.09.2015
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Halka Varhaníková

Guidelines

Constructions of space become exceptionally interesting and complex in post-colonial British writing where urban landscape is filtered through the eyes of first and second generation immigrants from a number of Britain's former colonies. The MA dissertation will deal with such immigrant experiences as it will discuss the topic of mapping the city in several works of post-colonial British literature that were published during both the 20th and 21st centuries. All of the novels chosen for the project have one aspect in common and that is the location as the stories are all set in London. The major focus of the dissertation will be three novels by contemporary female novelists: Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal, White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Brick Lane by Monica Ali. However, the thesis will also contain digressions to a number of older works which deal with the migrant experience in London, such as Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, Meera Syal’s Anita and Me, or V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. In general, the MA dissertation will discuss the construction of the city in the novels and it will attempt to employ the issue of gender as a factor in perception of urban space.

References

Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. London: Black Swan, 2004.
Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.
Naipaul, V. S. The Mimic Men. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2011.
Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. London: Viking Penguin, 1988.
Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. Harlow: Longman, 2009.
Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
Syal, Meera. Anita and Me. London: Flamingo, 1996.
Syal, Meera. Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee. London: Black Swan, 2000.

Seznam sekundární literatury:
Ackroyd, Peter. London: A Biography. London: Random House, 2001.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge.,1989.
Ball, John C. Imagining London: Postcolonial Fiction and the Transnational Space. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2004.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 1994.
Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 2005.
Chalupský, P., and Anna Grmelová. Litteraria Pragensia Studies in Literature and Culture: Urban Spaces in Literature. Praha: Litteraria Pragensia Books, 2010.
Guignery, Vanessa. (Re-)mapping London: Visions of the Metropolis in the Contemporary Novel in English. Paris: Editions Publibook, 2008.
Hussain, Yasmin. Writing Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture And Ethnicity. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005.
McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism and Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis. London: Routledge, 2004.
McLeod, John. The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies. New York: Routledge, 2007.
Miranne, Kristine, and Alma H. Young. Gendering the City: Women, Boundaries, and Visions of Urban Life. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

Sinha, Sunita. Post-colonial Women Writers: New Perspectives. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers And Distributors, 2008.
Varma, Rashmi. The Postcolonial City and Its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.