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Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. John C. Hawley, ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson, advisory ed. Westport, Connecticut. Greenwood. 2001. xii + 510 pages. $99.95. ISBN 0-313-31192-7
THE DEGREE of "establishment" of a discipline can be calibrated not only by considering its dedicated conferences, chairs, degree programs, institutions, journals, book series, and exclusive argot but also by the publication of dedicated glossaries, reference works, and encyclopedias. On this count, postcolonialism is faring well, as the present volume makes evident. What is most striking about this particular work is its enormous scope; postcolonial studies are often limited to the investigation of British colonialism and the anglophone postcolonial world, but by including surveys on Eastern European/post-Soviet literatures, francophone literatures, Chinese literatures, African-language literatures, Arabic literatures, et cetera, the symbolic, linguistic, geographical, and cultural reach of...