This collection suggests that the disciplines of literature and anthropology are not static entities but instead fluid sites of shifting cultural currents and academic interests. The essays conclude that the origins, sources, and intersections of the two disciplines are constantly being revised, and reconceived, leading to new possibilities of understanding texts.

The authors address the ways in which the language of social science fuses with that of the literary imagination. The essays fit excellently with the current interest in interdisciplinary studies and challenge students to see texts as parts of a larger global and cultural matrix.