Introduction : writing back to self -- Genealogies and functions of self-reflexive fiction -- (En)countering sex in the nationalist canon -- Potentials and pitfalls of national language literatures -- Orature and deconstructed folklore -- Politicized palimpsests and gendered intertexts -- Painted metaphors : the gendered deployment of visual arts -- Refiguring (out) queer sexualities -- Gendered theoretical recalibrations.