Credits: Who Created The Postcolonial and Postimperial Web?

Credits: Who Created The Postcolonial and Postimperial Web Web?

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University; Shaw Professor of English and Digital Culture (Computer Science), National University of Singapore

The Postcolonial and Postimperial Web and Context34

This collection of materials on recent postcolonial and postimperial literature in English is the latest, vastly expanded descendant of Context 34, which served as a resource for my courses (formerly English 34, now 27) at Brown University. These materials ultimately derive from Context 32, the Intermedia web that provided contextual information for English 32, "Survey of English literature from 1700 to the Present." Context 32 was begun in Spring 1985 as part of Brown University's Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) Intermedia project, which IBM, Apple Computers, the Annenberg/CPB Project, and other sources funded.

Working working with IRISm I designed and edited the entire original web, made many of the links. Funded by IRIS, Randall Bass, now a faculty member at Georgetown University, added materials on individual authors and political discourse. In 1992-93 Ho Lin '92 transferred most of the documents from the Intermedia system (which ceased operating in 1992) into three separate Storyspace webs and relinked them. Since then students in various intonations of my postcolonial literature courses have contributed materials, as have the members of English 168, an honors seminar whose subject in 1996 was Victorian and Neo-Victorian writers.

Transferring the Storyspace Web into HTML

Beginning in April 1995, I created the icons, designed the layout, and using Storyspace 1.3 and Robert C. Best's HTML Web Weaver began to put together the HTML version of the Web. By late Spring 1966, I switched to BBEdit , and using this software between April and June 1996, Jay Dillemuth MFA '96 carried out the ardous task of editing, formatting, and linking many of the materials in the web. Since themn I have redesigned the web as readers submit more materials and as readers' contributions opened new areas.

How Can You Add to the Postcolonial and Postimperial Web?

This collection of materials will continue to grow as students and faculty at various institutions interested in these subjects -- and postcolonial authors themselves -- contribute new essays, questions, images, and so forth. I welcome your corrections, contribitions, suggestions for links, and other materials. Please send them to me at

Basic directions for contributing to the site.

List of Contributors

Click here for the honor roll!