Our Mission

Postcolonial Networks brings together scholars, activists, and leaders with the urgency of a movement to foster decolonized relationships, innovative scholarship, and social transformation.

Postcolonial Networks Board

JPN Reviews

Ogbu U. Kalu, Peter Vethanayagamony and Edmund Kee-Fook Chia, 2010. Mission After Christendom: Emergent Themes in Contemporary Mission. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 177pp.

June 7th, 2012|

Mission after Christendom: Emergent Themes in Contemporary Mission derives its impetus and draws inspiration from the one-hundred year anniversary of the historic Edinburgh 1910 conference which is widely recognized as a watershed event in the modern ecumenical movement. This significant collection of essays skillfully weaves together papers on mission presented on various occasions under the auspices of the Chicago Centre for Global Ministries, to reflect the challenges and possibilities inherent in the rich tapestry of twenty-first century mission. Familiar missiological terrain is revisited and hitherto under-explored territory boldly delved into to engender a fresh vision for mission.

Review of De La Torre, Miguel A. 2010. Latina/o Social Ethics: Moving Beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 157pp.

June 3rd, 2012|

Recent events in the past two years show that the subject of human rights of Latinos/as in the United States is more urgent than ever. The enforcement of Arizona immigration law SB1070 and subsequent similar legislation in Alabama and North Carolina, have shown that the path to full recognition of the rights and freedoms of the U.S. Latino/a community is long, and that there is much to be done. The DREAM Act, which seeks to provide educational opportunities to low-income youth—of which Latinos/as are a large percentage, has been in U.S. Congress for years, and has suffered continuous rejection by legislators and conservative organizations.

A Postcolonial Review of a Postcolonial Play: The Convert

May 22nd, 2012|

The last time I went to the theatre, it was filled with educated and privileged people from all around the Princeton, NJ area. A group of us, dissertation fellows, from the Hispanic Theological Initiative had been invited to see the play The Convert in its world premiere at McCarter Theatre where Emily Mann directed it. I know from comments I overheard from another group of church friends during intermission and afterward, that in their view much of the audience was filled with, in the words of my church friend, “white guilt.” But I also know that for some of us in the room, including myself as a Latin American Christian and student of Christian Social Ethics, the play made a different sort of sense.

Growing Up Different(ly): Space, Community and the Dissensual Bildungsroman in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, by Pramod K. Nayar

May 8th, 2012|

What strikes one first about Suzanne Collins’ bestselling trilogy, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay (2008-2010), are the echoes from William Golding’s marvelously frightening The Lord of the Flies, Stephen King’s The Running Man and the TV Reality show, Survivor. It also recalls that iconic eighteenth century text about European/Western individualism, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which really is the ancestor of Survivor as well. Collins’ trilogy is set some time in the future when the United States has been destroyed and rehabilitated in the form of twelve outlying districts controlled by the Capitol, together called Panem, under the control of President Snow.

Review of Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones, and Belén Vidal, eds. Cinema at the Periphery. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 280 pp.

April 27th, 2012|

Is a quiet revolution taking place at the intersection of film studies and postcolonial theory? Are we seeing a renewal of diasporic cinema and the production of innovative films in transnational contexts? Is the Hollywood hegemony slipping and the Eurocentric model redundant? After thirty years of ‘liberated’ international markets and unfettered ‘progress’ of globalization it is timely to take stock of the dialogues and debates being advanced in film studies and in the cinematic forum. A new collection of essays entitled Cinema at the Periphery seeks to explore some of these questions.

Review of Tejumola Olaniyan and James H. Sweet, ed. The African Diaspora And The Disciplines. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 376 pp.

March 27th, 2012|

The field of African Diaspora Studies is growing and becoming increasingly more sophisticated. Although there is a perceived lack in the field’s “existing body of conceptual and definitional knowledge” (Sweet, 2010, p. 1) this welcome, theory-thick anthology, The African Diaspora And The Disciplines, provides a refreshing corrective. The book features several of the papers presented at a two-day, March 2006 conference held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) that was organized to investigate what the volume’s editors consider to be an axiomatic issue in African Diaspora Studies, namely, how diaspora is conceived, especially in a transdisciplinary (literature, religious studies, genetic biology, history, archaeological chemistry, et al.) and transnational (Jamaica, Europe, and South Africa, et al.) way.

Review of Benjamin Valentín, ed. In Our Own Voices: Latino/a Renditions of Theology. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2010), 197 pp.

March 7th, 2012|

In Our Own Voices, edited by Benjamin Valentín, brings together a stellar group of U.S. theologians, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, to reflect on, reassess, and reformulate Christian themes and doctrines from a distinctively Latino/a theological perspective. Engaging biblical texts, Christian and non-Christian traditions, contemporary formulations of doctrines, as well as cultural and theoretical resources, In our Own Voices “seeks to contribute to the discussion of key theological concepts and doctrines within Latino/a theology specifically and in the field of theology more generally” (p. xiii). Six areas of theological reflection are addressed: the doctrines and symbols of God, creation, theological anthropology, Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.