"Traces of the Real: The Absent Presence of Photography in Postcolonial and Diasporic Literature"

Diasporic literature with its attendant themes of loss, longing, mourning and trauma, has obvious resonances with photography. By bringing together the multidisciplinary fields of postcolonial literature, migration studies and photography, this project aims to overcome the disciplinary divisions between these fields and shift the debate on the interactions between these sister arts. It attempts to study not the interaction of the written word and the visual image, but rather the written image which functions as a photographic metaphor to enhance the themes of the literary text.

Funding Source: RGC - General Research Fund (GRF)