Friday, September 18, 2026 | 6pm to 7:30pm
25 West 43rd Street, 10th Floor, Suite 1000
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan
Across Continents employs Goan literary subjectivity as epistemology to critique a specific limitation of postcolonial thought, one that does not account for the situations or afterlife of Portuguese colonialism. Employing various novels, R. Benedito Ferrão considers the relationship between Portuguese and British colonialisms through the displacement of Goan characters betwixt Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. The experiences of these figures in dealing with the processes of nation, statecraft, and political intrigue at various historical junctures offer a comparative understanding of the tumultuous conditions of postcoloniality in the making of marginalized subjectivity across continents.
In examining the mobility and diversity of Goan experiences as represented in works by Salman Rushdie, M. G. Vassanji, Roger King, and Margaret Mascarenhas, this book calls into question limits of citizenship, nationality, and notions of belonging. Ferrão centers seemingly minor figures to exemplify the effects of colonial and postcolonial changes that connect diverse geopolities.
Purchase Book: https://press.umich.edu/Books/A/Across-Continents3
More Info – Starting Tues, 9/22 to 11/24/26
Across Continents: Transnational Asian/American Perspectives (Fall 2026 Seminar)
Using a variety of literary and other texts, some referenced in Ferrão’s Across Continents, this six-session seminar will examine representations of displacement, post/coloniality, and transnationalism.
