The thirty papers in this volume are the product of a Conference of the Centre for the International Study of Literatures in English at Innsbruck University hosted by the School of Irish Studies at Concordia University Montreal. They examine how Literatures in English are increasingly influenced by globalization and hybridity stemming from national and international cross-cultural encounters. Particular attention is paid to the thematic aesthetics emanating from the changes in national identities and value systems as a result of increasing multicultural and minority voices within nation states, the growing cultural and linguistic networks of transnational interrelations, and more overt literary exploration of subjects such as law, religion and racism. These concerns by writers in English may result from actual migrations and border crossings but may also stem from imaginative processes which envision identities that transcend or eschew concrete manifestations of socially or nationally constructed selves.weiterlesen