Cultural Journey Research Articles

“Voyage through death/to life upon these shores”: the living dead of the Middle Passage

While historical studies of the Atlantic slave trade have amply demonstrated the magnitude of slave mortality during the Middle Passage, only recently have they started to examine how the captives might have endured and coped with this traumatic experience. Although it constitutes a major topos in African diasporic culture, the Middle Passage has only occasionally been represented directly and in details in novels and in films. This article examines three recent narratives of the Middle Passage, Fred D'Aguiar's novel Feeding the Ghosts (1998), Guy Deslauriers's film Passage du milieu (2000), and Stephanie Smallwood’s historical study Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (2007). Beyond their individual poetic, aesthetic, and scholarly qualities, what is most striking about these three texts is that they all use the figure of the living dead in order to explore the captives’ experience of the transatlantic journey. If the ghastly quality of the living dead powerfully captures the life-threatening material and physical conditions the captives endured on the voyage, its dual, liminal character also allows D'Aguiar, Deslauriers, and Smallwood to represent the metaphysical, psychological, social, and cultural journey they were forced to undertake. Through their use of the trope of the living dead, these three texts show that if death is indeed a central aspect of the experience of the Middle Passage, it impacts the captives in ways that go well beyond the issue of mortality.

Cai Luong (Renovated Theatre): a cultural transfer journey

Cai Luong (Renovated Theatre), a theatre form created by Southerners in Vietnam, is the confluence of cultural elements within the country as well as across its border, along the history of the Southern land. This paper contributes to theatre literature in general and Southeast Asian theatre literature in particular by painting an overall picture of the contemporary situation of Cai Luong theatrical art and, through the analysis of cultural transfer in Cai Luong art, deciphering the hybrid nature of Cai Luong theatrical art.

Transcendentny sens Szlaku św. Jakuba – Camino de Santiago

When we are celebrating the Year of Faith, which invites us to confess, celebrate and witness our faith, we must make a faithful reading of the current situation with the light of the mysterious lamp of faith. History records the unusual breadth of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela from its beginnings in the ninth century, during the Middle Ages until today. Important cultural elements, such as ideas, institutions, legends, were brought by the Jacobean pilgrims. Pilgrims brought to the Spanish kingdoms new forms of artistic expressions, symbols, beliefs and ways of life, which joined the places they crossed, even at the end of the way in penitential attitude, they loaded limestone to contribute in building the basilica of Santiago. The Way to Santiago has been a journey of faith and a journey of culture from the beginning, the most important event in shaping the medieval Europe as Western Christianity.

Translating the Style of Tourism Promotional Discourse: A Cross Cultural Journey into Stylescapes

Different societies behave and view the world differently due to different cultural values. These cultural values shape people's needs, motives, expectations and preferences. Based on these cultural values, themes are carefully selected and exploited by promoters in tourist promotional texts (TPTs) in order to persuade people to travel and become tourists. However, it seems that it is not only the themes that matter, but also the way they are communicated in TPTs. Different cultures have different ways of communicating, which in turn affects the stylistic features of TPTs. These stylistic differences pose a key challenge for translators of TPTs, whose role is to produce an effective translation in the target language and culture in order to persuade potential tourists in that language and culture. This paper analyses the style of an existing published translation of a tourism promotional website and discusses the cultural challenges involved. The discussion is supported by findings derived from focus groups and parallel text analyses.

Roberta Facchinetti (ed.), A Cultural Journey through the English Lexicon

(Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, 1 vol., 283 pp. ISBN 1-4438-3509-9) di Angela Andreani

Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths by Kevin M. F Platt (review)

SEER, 91, 4, OCTOBER 2013 898 full military discipline. His subsequent change of heart finally discredited Kerenskii in the eyes of almost all army officers, who declined thereafter to support him when the Bolsheviks overthrew his government. Bushkovitch offers no explanation of what ‘Soviets’ were. The translation, ‘council’ (p. 285), does not do justice to them as institutions of direct democracy in which workers and soldiers aspired to take charge of their own lives. Soviets bore the Communists to power in October 1917, but sometimes then turned against them as the Communists’ authoritarianism became more pronounced. Without such explanation, it is difficult for the reader to understand why in 1921 the Kronstadt sailors should call for ‘Soviets to be elected without Communists’ (p. 318). It is easy and perhaps unfair to single out errors, which are more or less inevitable in a survey of a whole country’s history. This book has considerable virtues. Readers will find it reliable and on the whole clear and well laid out. Given the author’s abstinence from overt interpretation, though, I suspect they will use it more as a reference work than as a source of understanding on Russia’s historical development. UCL SSEES Geoffrey Hosking Platt, Kevin M. F. Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2011. xi + 294 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00: £29.50. Terror and Greatness is a cultural journey across two centuries of Russian myth-making about Tsars Ivan IV and Peter I. Based on historical, literary and visual sources, Kevin Platt explores how Russian intellectuals, living in diverse eras and circumstances, struggled to come to terms with two of Russia’s most emblematic and problematic monarchs. Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, as they came to be called, represented distinct dynasties and ruled in very different historical conditions. Yet because of the dramatic events associated with their reigns, generations of intellectuals have viewed both rulers as symbols of the state-society relationship that occupies so central a place in modern Russian historiography. Specifically, the reigns of Ivan and Peter highlight the problem of tyranny and the role of coercion in achieving progressive change. Platt’s goal is to explore how Russian intellectuals employing different modes of cultural expression celebrated the accomplishments of Ivan and Peter — their commitment to reforms that strengthened the Russian state and promoted social progress — while also condemning their bloody methods. The result has been a malleable historical narrative that serves as the foundation for a Russian collective identity rooted in the memory of trauma and shared victimhood. REVIEWS 899 Platt moves back and forth between historiography, literature, theatre, painting and film in order to trace this collective memory of trauma. He begins in the early nineteenth century with historians N. M. Karamzin and N. G. Ustrialov and novelists I. I. Lazhechnikov and A. K. Tolstoi, commentators who echoed an official historiography that distinguished Peter’s heroic greatness from Ivan’s moral depravity and violence. In A. S. Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman (1833), a more ambiguous and intellectually compelling image of Peter appeared, one that continues to produce multiple interpretations within the larger thematic parameters of progress and violence. The ‘terror and greatness’ motif also occupied literary critic V. G. Belinskii and historians K. D. Kavelin and S. M. Solovev: all presented Ivan as a state builder and hence precursor to Peter. Slavophile thinkers of the same period took a more critical approach, condemning Peter’s methods and ‘achievements’ amid calls for a return to authentic national principles. The next phase of mythmaking covered by Platt is the era of the Great Reforms, a time when historians focused on Peter as a model for statesponsored social change, and playwrights, due to censorship restrictions, paid more attention to Ivan. Heart-wrenching treatments of intergenerational conflict, represented by the filicides of Tsareviches Ivan and Aleksei, also date from this period. Historians debated the necessity of Aleksei’s death without, however, abandoning the notion that state interests must override personal needs. Unwilling to excuse Peter’s methods, they nonetheless tended to view coercion as the handmaiden of progress. With respect to Tsar Ivan, works of...

Forcing Prison Doors: Socio-cultural Mission of Dr Bhupen Hazarika

Dr Bhupen Hazarika (1926–2011), a musician, lyricist, folklorist, dramatist, film-producer/director, columnist and journalist from the Indian state of Assam will be remembered for his extraordinary contribution to the world of Indian folklore in general and modern Assamese (a trans-ethnic linguistic and cultural community of India) music in particular. In him, the modern Assamese music finds its highest culmination. Dedicated to the wave of left-progressive cultural movement steered by the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association (IPTA) in the early phase of his creative cultural journey, Dr Hazarika was greatly influenced by the wave of the nationalist and regional aspirations in the state of Assam particularly during the long Assam movement (1979–85). Throughout his life, Dr Hazarika cherished the values of modernity, humanity, secularism and composite culture. He remains as the most dominant cultural ‘icon’ for most of the twentieth century, and also the early part of the twenty-first century Assam. The present article is an attempt to explore the musical journey of Dr Bhupen Hazarika with special focus on his social and philosophical mission.

Integration of Multicultural Education into English Teaching and Learning: A Case Study in Liaoning Police Academy

The multicultural education has become the educational reality all over the world with the deepening and widening of the international and interpersonal communication in economic and cultural spheres. More and more people regardless of race, nationality, language, and culture come together to share the human cultures and make spiritual communication. How to promote smooth and successful interpersonal communication among different peoples, and how to enhance mutual respect and understanding among diverse cultures? The paper takes these issues into account and aims to find appropriate answers. Based on the fundamental theories of multiculturalism and actual practices of multicultural education in America and Canada, the paper discusses the practice and significance of multicultural education in English class in Liaoning Police Academy. This creative multicultural plan adheres to four basic principles, carrying out unique warm-up and after-class activities, such as Cultural Journey Series, Native American’s Cultural Nurturing, Cultural Immersion in Growing-up QQ English Group. After one and a half years’ multicultural training, 20 minority students build sufficient self-confidence, introducing their respective minority cultures to other students and learning a lot of Chinese traditional cultures and Western cultures. The Han students also reap bountiful harvest, taking active interest in other cultures and mastering basic knowledge and skills to cope with cross-cultural communication. As the accumulation of multicultural educational experience and reflection upon its strengths and limitations are continuously enriched, this multicultural education program will be more efficient, diversified and fascinating.

Building Bridges in a Third Space: A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of Teaching Chinese in American Chinese Schools

This study explores the lived experiences of Chinese teachers in American Chinese Schools. Max van Manen’s methodology for hermeneutic phenomenological research provides a framework for the study, and the philosophical writings of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida guide the textual interpretations. Pedagogical voices of Aoki, Pinar, and Greene, and cultural journeys of Hongyu Wang and Xin Li reveal possibilities for understanding the experiences of Chinese teachers, as the question is addressed: “What is the meaning of teaching Chinese in American Chinese Schools?” Ten Chinese teachers engaged in a series of open-ended conversations. The conversations illuminate the experience of Confucian teaching meeting American pedagogies around two main themes. First, in following the metaphor of Chinese knotwork, the teachers speak of their struggles and challenges between Chinese Confucian and American pedagogies, reflect on splitting and splicing the knots through changing and adjusting their method of Confucian teaching. Second, they tell of the experiences of building bridges in a third space through dialogically connecting the different cultures and pedagogies in order to seek the appropriate way of teaching and learning Chinese well in American Chinese Schools.

Modelling continuous improvement maturity in the public sector: key stages and indicators

This article explores the challenges in ensuring that a continuous improvement (CI) culture is diffused throughout an organisation. It presents a model of CI maturity that has been developed following a review of literature and earlier empirical work undertaken across the UK public sector. The model is based on a set of eight organisational behaviours that can be used to gauge and guide organisational progress along three key stages of CI maturity: going through the motions, transforming and embedding. Case study evidence is presented to show the applicability of the three-stage model in assessing the evolution of CI maturity. The research re-affirms that CI is not something that organisations have or do not have, but is part of a cultural transformation journey that may be impeded along the way, with different parts of organisations experiencing different blockages. This model can also be used by organisations as a form of self-assessment and to help educate staff about CI behaviours.

The Jewish Contribution to the Transmission of the Classical Legacy

The transmission and acquisition of the wisdom of the ancients throughout the Middle Ages is a fascinating phenomenon in which languages served as the primary vehicles for this journey of classical culture. The main route – but not the only one – was located on the Mediterranean coasts and incorporated Asia, Europe and Africa. It was a multidirectional journey.

Advance care planning: the journey of changing hospital culture in an in-centre dialysis unit

The mortality rate for patients with end stage renal disease is comparable to or higher than many cancer diagnoses. While dialysis provides life-sustaining treatment, kidney failure is irreversible and is...

Un precario contro il sistema. Ricordando Luciano Bianciardi

Forty years since Luciano Bianciardi's death (Grosseto, 14 December 1922-Milan, 14 November 1971) it is time to stress his heretical and visionary profile. In the conformist panorama of Italian literature, Bianciardi represented an exception, not only by the stylistic point of view, but also by the political one. His partnership with Delio Cantimori highlights the contradictions and the complexity of XX century, his adventurous cultural journey leads directly to our life, to our life agra.

The long journey of Italian grappa: from quintessential element to local moonshine to national sunshine

The history of grappa has its roots in the metaphysical alchemic search for the quintessential classical element along with earth, fire, water, and air. The Greeks called such element aether, or pure, fresh air, and it was believed to be the material of the region of the universe where the gods lived. It was the product of distillation, mostly from wine. When Italian distillers turned their attention to the less valuable pomace, or the skins, seeds, and other residues left after the grapes are crushed for wine, grappa was born. Using data which was collected during fieldwork in northern Italy and from private and public archival documents, published works, and selected secondary data, the paper follows the social, cultural, and economic journey of grappa from its remote and still obscure birth to the long, modest identification as the laborer's alcoholic staple, to the present times, when grappa is experiencing a new and trendy socioeconomic success as national patrimony. Paralleling other typical regional products, the paper reveals how the socioeconomic and geographic evolution of grappa can be linked to the growth of consumerist forms of identity-production of vernacular products in globalizing markets.

Not a museum but a cultural journey: Skwxwú7mesh political affect

The Skwxwú7mesh or Squamish, a Coast Salish people, are one of the Four Host First Nations who constituted themselves into a supra‐national corporate entity for the purpose of promoting, and protecting, their cultures during the 2010 Winter Olympics. The Sea to Sky Highway, carrying Olympic traffic between the sports venues of Vancouver and Whistler, runs through their un‐ceded territory. The Skwxwú7mesh have merged the natural spectacle of the coastal highway with the high‐speed affect of their own cultural spectacle. The intricate spatialized and affective dimensions of the modes and materials of cultural disclosure, and retention, along what the Skwxwú7mesh are calling a ‘cultural highway’ establish links between topography, flora, and fauna that reinforce incontrovertible rights. The strategy flouts anxieties about the exploitative spectacularization of the Native while raising new ones about national display, the embedded Olympics, neoliberal ‘economic uncertainty’, and the ethnic essentialism inseparable from British Columbia's high‐stakes contemporary Treaty Process.RésuméLes Skwxwú7mesh ou Squamish, un peuple salish de la côte, font partie des Four Host First Nations, quatre tribus des Premières nations qui se sont constituées en personnalité juridique supranationale afin de promouvoir et de protéger leur culture pendant les Jeux Olympiques d’Hiver 2010. L’autoroute « Sea to Sky Highway », reliant les sites olympiques de Vancouver et de Whistler, traverse leur territoire non aliéné. Les Skwxwú7mesh ont combiné le spectacle naturel de cette autoroute côtière avec l’affect pour la grande vitesse de leur propre spectacle culturel. Les dimensions spatialisées et affectives complexes des modes et des matériaux de la révélation et de la rétention culturelle, associées à ce que les Skwxwú7mesh appellent une « autoroute culturelle », créent des liens entre topographie, flore et faune et renforcent ainsi leurs droits incontestables. Cette stratégie atténue l’anxiété liée à l’exploitation spectaculaire des Peuples natifs, tout en suscitant de nouvelles inquiétudes sur la visibilité nationale, l’empiètement des Jeux Olympiques, « l’incertitude économique » du néolibéralisme et l’essentialisme ethnique indissociable du processus, chargé d’enjeux, de négociation de traités en cours en Colombie‐Britannique.

Buddhist Art: An Historical and Cultural Journey. By Gilles Béguin. Bangkok: River Books, 2009. 400 pp. $80.00 (cloth).

Buddhist Art: An Historical and Cultural Journey. By Gilles Béguin. Bangkok: River Books, 2009. 400 pp. $80.00 (cloth).

Unmasking the Inequitable Discipline Experiences of Urban Black Girls: Implications for Urban Educational Stakeholders

There is a large body of research examining the discipline experiences of Black males (Lewis et al. in Souls: A Critical Journey of Black Politics, Culture, and Society,2009; Skiba et al. in The Urban Review, 34, 317–348, 2002); however, less is known about the types of behavioral infractions Black female students exhibit and the discipline sanctions imposed for Black girls for such infractions. As a result, the purpose of this study is to examine the type of discipline infractions exhibited by Black female students enrolled in an urban school district and to explore whether the pattern of discipline infractions and sanctions imposed for Black girls disproportionately differs from all female students, but more specifically White and Hispanic females. Results suggest that Black girls are overrepresented in exclusionary discipline practices and Black girls reason for discipline referrals differs significantly from White and Hispanic girls. Based on these findings, recommendations are provided for urban educational stakeholders.

A Cultural Journey to the Agro-Food Crisis: Policy Discourses in the EU

The agro-food domain in Europe is characterized by the appearance of recurrent unwanted surprises. These events, although causing obvious physical consequences, in essence depart from the expectations of the society. We argue that this unstable situation is best understood as an identity crisis of agriculture rather than as a contingent crisis of a specific economic sector. Thus the present agro-food crisis is in fact a crisis of identity. This is clearly reflected by the cohabitation within the agro-food policy domain of different, often contradictory, policy discourses, namely: free tradism, multifunctionality, and agroecology. All of them try to impose their particular visions. All of them struggle to issue the policy measures they conceive as appropriate.

Asian and Latino Immigrants' Preferences for Walkable Sub-Urban Neighborhoods

When immigrants arrive in the United States, their search for a new home represents a transformative personal and cultural journey. This paper investigates this transformative process in relation to Smart Growth principles around walk-ability promoted by a suburban county in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. This survey of immigrants from various countries in Asia and Latin America, finds that seventy percent of those who emigrated from urban environments prefer to live in single-family detached houses. Survey participants from Latin American countries prefer these homes in compact urban locations more than Asian immigrants and native-born Americans, while Asians prefer suburban neighborhoods with pedestrian amenities. Their preferences represent a hybrid version of the American dream which combines both the urban and suburban imaginary, or what this article terms “sub-urban” preferences. This study emphasizes that walkability is critical to immigrant sub-urban preferences and ought to influence the way professionals design and plan neighborhoods and housing.

Hannah Frank's Glasgow Jewish Journey: the Gorbals to the South Side

This essay celebrates the life and art of Glasgow artist Hannah Frank whose Jewish journey took her from the traditional Gorbals tenement where she was born in 1908 to the Newton Mearns Jewish care home where she died in December 2008. This short physical journey formed only pan of what was a substantially larger intellectual and cultural journey which took Frank through the canon of English and European literature, poetry and art, theatre and cinema. This essay uses Rank's diaries from 1924 and 1925 to explore this larger journey, using examples to show how her reading would influence her art throughout her life.