Foreign Places Research Articles

The Middle East in Canadian foreign policy and national identity formation

While often overlooked, the Middle East has been a pivotal geographical and discursive space in Canadian foreign policy and national identity formation. The region was the birthplace of Canada’s liberal internationalist foreign policy identity, Pearsonianism, and the national myths associated with it. The Middle East also appears to be where Pearsonianism was later superseded by a more realist foreign policy approach, centred on key bilateral relationships with Western countries and a shared sense of Western civilisation. For reasons tied to identity formation and how Canadians perceive their place in the world, the Middle East is therefore a deeply contested space in the domestic arena and a site of deep divisions today. With the support of three contemporary case studies—Israel and Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—this paper explores how Canada’s ties to the Middle East have shaped and continue to shape Canada’s foreign policy, national identity, and place in the world.

Review: O'Neil Ford on Architecture

Review: <i>O'Neil Ford on Architecture</i>

World

World

Locating the Traveller: Genni Gunn and Nostalgia on the Move

This paper analyzes the concept of nostos through a reading of Italian-Canadian writer Genni Gunn’s autobiographical travelogue Tracks: Journeys in Time and Place (2013) to show how its narratives of movement contest meanings of home and homecoming. Gunn initiates new ways of thinking about return by taking the migrant traveler as its central figure and envisioning home as a “practice of displacement” (Evelein 21) wherein “home” is not achievable through physical return, but through memory. Specifically, Gunn subverts traditional notions of home by reimagining Italy through her travels to foreign places, which ultimately serve as sites of return to her homeland via cartographies of memory. In Gunn’s exploration of nostalgia, her narrative presents her identity as an Italian-Canadian immigrant as no longer defined by national borders, but rather as a condition of movement. Gunn uses the framework of travel to link acts of homemaking and homefinding so that the meaning of nostos emerges as a kind of dwelling-in-displacement.

Intercultural communication and US higher education: How US students and faculty can improve: International students’ classroom experiences

Intercultural communication research rarely addresses the perspective of international students, who face challenges as they leave family, move to a foreign place in the US, pursue a degree, and study in a foreign language. Considering these students’ perspectives, US universities, which house large numbers of international students, should consider how they can help these students better adapt to US academic life. To address these challenges, we invited international students at a 4-year tier-one state university to interview, and we qualitatively analyzed their responses to identify how universities can help international students. Our participants noted that US students can befriend them, respect them in the classroom, and learn about other cultures to be more welcoming. Faculty have the most to do to improve international students’ success in the classroom; faculty can grade consistently, communicate outside the classroom, allow time for students to ask questions, help students adapt to US classrooms, speak slowly and eliminate idioms from examples, explain course objectives per industry, share interests and personal information, effectively use class time (particularly final examination weeks), and learn about cultures to better meet students’ needs. Additional research can diversify international students’ needs per their classification (graduate versus undergraduate), home culture, and expectations.

Las formas del exilio. Apuntes para una biografía de Juana Manso

El artículo propone un abordaje a la trayectoria de la escritora argentina Juana Manso (1819-1875) ubicándola en el contexto de su época y de las circunstancias que comparte con muchas de sus contemporáneas latinoamericanas. Entre esas circunstancias compartidas, elegimos un eje que atraviesa esas trayectorias: la experiencia del exilio, pensado como una realidad que no se acota en la expulsión de una patria, hacia otro ámbito extraño y ajeno. Planteamos aquí el tema del exilio en la vida de Manso como la privación de otros espacios, materiales o simbólicos, que reflejan el pensamiento dominante sobre el lugar que se les asigna a las intelectuales de su tiempo.

Conquering Ida: An Ecofeminist Reading of Catullus’ Poem 63

AbstractMany have recognised poem 63 as a study in contrasts – light versus darkness, masculine versus feminine, rationality versus madness, animal versus human, culture versus nature. Caught between these polarities is the figure of Attis, removed from everything bright, male, sane, human, and civilised by one impassioned act. The poem suggests that it is partly the nature of the place, its quasi-Hippocratic airs, waters, and places, that emasculates Attis, making him like anotha mulier, iuvenca, andfamula.This article will use ecofeminist theory – in particular, Val Plumwood'sFeminism and the Mastery of Nature– to investigate the logic of domination running between the poem's polarities and to show how a foreign ‘Eastern’ wilderness effeminises Greek Attis. Moreover, it will be shown that the characterisation of Attis and thegallias aduxand hiscomitesassociates the story with the Roman imperial endeavour, suggesting that we can read the poem alongside others that portray conquest (11, 29) and the experience of young men abroad on provincial cohorts (10, 28, 47). In this way, Catullus implies that the imperial project is also made weak and feminine by its very contact with foreign places.

The Challenging Experiences of Nursing Students in South Korea: A Qualitative Inquiry of International Students

South Korea is one of the popular destinations for international students to achieve their education. In 2019, due to the development of the Study Korea Project, more than 160 thousand international students were studying at one of the Korean colleges and universities. Due to sociocultural differences (in language, religion, race, and nationality), international students often encounter difficulties caused by discrimination, bias, and stigma during their time in Korea. In other words, while classrooms may be ready for the enrolment of additional international students, local communities, support services, and residents are not. Based on the Social Stigma approach, the researcher collected qualitative interview data of 99 international students from China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Japan and the United States, who are majoring in nursing about their sense-making process and the experiences in Korea. The finding indicated that almost all participants experienced discrimination due to their foreign status, skin colour, language, nationality, and place of origin insides and outsides of the university environment. Furthermore, all expressed negative academic and living experiences in the region and will leave the region once they completed their education. The results demonstrate the necessity for various parties in Korea, including school leaders, government agencies, policymakers, faculty heads, and NGOs, to rethink and reform the country's approach to attracting international students.

The Hong Kong Modernism of Leung Ping-kwan by C. T. Au (review)

Reviewed by: The Hong Kong Modernism of Leung Ping-kwan by C. T. Au Howard Y. F. Choy C. T. Au. The Hong Kong Modernism of Leung Ping-kwan. Lexington Books, 2020. 202 p. Considered a sequel to her Modernist Aesthetics in Taiwanese Poetry Since the 1950s (Leiden: Brill, 2008) and a synthesis of eight Chinese articles and an English chapter published between 2009 and 2017, Chung To Au's 區仲桃 The Hong Kong Modernism of Leung Ping-kwan studies the creative and critical writings--including poetry, fiction, travelogues and essays--of writer-scholar Leung Ping-kwan 梁秉鈞 (nom de plume Yasi/Ye Si 也斯, 12 Mar. 1949-5 Jan. 2013) through the lens of modernism. Au's monograph is a new addition to earlier scholarship on Leung by Ackbar Abbas, Ikegami Sadako 池上貞子, John Minford, Leonard K. K. Chan 陳國球, Lo Kwai Cheung 羅貴祥, Rey Chow 周蕾, Wolfgang [End Page 218] Kubin and others. In the first chapter of five, Au defines "Hong Kong modernism" by relating Leung's modernist literature to Western modernisms as well as Chinese modernism of the 1940s, distinguishing it from Taiwanese modernism on the one hand and borrowing Peter Brooker's idea of "altermodernism," an alternative or variant postcolonial, multicultural modernism, on the other. Au discusses Hong Kong as a modern city and Hongkongers' problematic Chinese identity, placing Ye Si on a par with two early Hong Kong modernists, Lau Yee Cheung 劉以鬯 (Liu Yichang, 1918-2018) and Ma Lang 馬朗 (1933-). The following chapter further traces Leung's modernism to the Chinese shuqing 抒情 'lyrical' and yongwu 詠物 literary traditions. Starting from Leung's critical essays on lyricism, Au argues that his "poems on objects" (yongwu shi 詩), particularly those on food, are less successful than his fiction in maintaining the correlation between humans and objects due to his optimistic, instead of sentimental, tone and his control over food in poetry. Based on an interview with the poet, the author understands that such objects enable him to express his idea, rather than inspire him to write poems. Yet this power relationship is complicated and changed in his fiction, where food embodies metaphorical meanings beyond its normal function. The reviewer finds that such subject/object binary opposition attributed to Leung's poetic "failure" is too mechanical, untrue, and therefore unconvincing. The third chapter focuses on Leung's invention of the "extraordinary ordinary" under the subthemes of home, medicine, clothes and, again, food. The author suggests that the poet discovers his home in foreign places, such as the old houses of Freud, Kafka and Brecht in Vienna, Prague and Berlin, respectively. More interestingly, Ye Si's modernism is related to medicine, mainly madness, as found in Paper Cuts (Jianzhi 剪紙1977--while Au translated the title as Paper Cutouts, I prefer Brian Holton's rendition Paper Cuts [Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015]). Au's coined term "colonial dis-ease," unfortunately, is not fully explained in the book. The issue of colonial identity is addressed allegorically in modern fashion, especially through an intertextual reading of Ye Si's Clothink (Yi xiang 衣想, 1998) and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Lastly, Leung's poems on food and his novel Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart (Houzhimin [End Page 219] shiwu yu aiqing 後殖民食物與愛情, 2009) are reexamined in relation to the formation of a fluid, hybrid Hong Kong identity. However, the importance of the Cantonese daily language in his writings is not mentioned at all. Chapter four explores the writer's multiple perspectives developed from his travelogues and magical realist fiction in a global context. Au points out that Ye Si has gone beyond imperialism and colonialism in these two subgenres. He employs magical realism to describe mental illness and people's alienation to Hong Kong and meta-fictionalizes his "countertravel writings" by merging various forms of lyrical novel, prose, autobiography, criticism, odes, and even email from the standpoint of different types of travelers, including both the colonizer and the colonized. In the concluding chapter, Au returns to the beginnings of modernism through translation. Leung's literary career started with reading masterpieces of world literature in translation, such as Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Then, in the early 1970s, he translated foreign literature into Chinese, including French nouveaux romans...

Conquering Love

In a contribution to a symposium on xenophilia, this essay — a study of Brian Friel’s 1980 play Translations — raises the question of whether all xenophilia is by nature doomed to fail. Set in Ireland in 1833, the drama centers on the tension arising from a young British lieutenant’s falling in love with an Irish-speaker while he is in her country to translate Irish place-names into English for an imperial cartographic survey. While the lieutenant is referred to in the play as a Hibernophile, the essay interprets his love as xenophilic: love for the foreignness rather than the Irishness of what he encounters. The lieutenant’s love of foreign places and their names impedes his effort to systematize Ireland for imperial ends, and his love for an Irish woman brings about his own undoing. Applying Simone de Beauvoir’s view of alterity to the lieutenant’s xenophilia, the essay questions whether the English written over the Irish in this play and the lieutenant’s desire written over the objects of his love obscure enough of the other’s otherness to render his xenophilia no longer viable.

A Canadian’s Reflections on American Psychiatry

A Canadian’s Reflections on American Psychiatry

PASSAGER

The Passager&#x0D; A collaborative project&#x0D; Synopsis: Asef is a young Afghan refugee who left his country in search of a safer living conditions. He arrived in Greece in 2016 and was moved to the refugee camps in Athens; Piraeus port and then to Eleniko. During this period, he struggles several times to cross into Western Europe. A few months later, Asef meets Arjang Omrani and after awhile they decided to make a diary film about Asef's everyday life in Greece and his attempts to flee to other countries. Asef was coached by Arjang Omrani during the film process in which he was learning about ideas of filming, montage, and storytelling. Using his own mobile phone Asef manages to collect his video diaries that lasted for the next eight months. While showing his surroundings, Asef gives insightful portraits of Eleniko refugee camp, Victoria Park in Athens, where he goes to contact the smugglers. Also his experiences in&#x0D; Patra, in the abandoned wood factory where he was sheltering, and the port where he tries to hide under the trucks that are waiting to embark on ferries to go to Italy. The young Afghan refugee not only shows the foreign places of passage but also he reflects upon his motivations of getting into this journey and the constraints and difficulties he has gone through.&#x0D; “Why can’t I have a normal life!” speaks out Asef from the rooftop of a deserted wood factory. He talks about his dreams and desires while questioning the universal injustice in people's life conditions.

Foreign places as Korean spaces: Representations of national trauma in the South Korean dramas Ireland and Descendants of the Sun

The study of Korean media, and K-dramas specifically, has been dominated largely by discourses surrounding the ‘Korean Wave’ and the increased popularity of South Korean popular culture abroad. More specifically, many English-language analyses have tended to focus their attention on the Korean Wave as an analytical framework, thus failing to acknowledge the ways in which these texts address domestic audiences and societal issues specific to South Korea. Thus, little attention has been paid to more implicit representations of the nation and its past in these K-dramas, a particularly noteworthy oversight when we consider that melodrama, a distinctly reflexive genre, is the governing mode of many contemporary K-dramas. Thus, this article aims to demonstrate the multiplicity of meanings that can exist within these media texts, paying particular attention to the reflexive capacities of the melodramatic mode. Through the examination of two case studies, Ireland and Descendants of the Sun, this article will discuss the ways in which shifting inter-Korean relations have been articulated in both dramas through sociopolitical contextualization and narrative analysis. This article will examine the use of foreign places and foreign crises in these dramas, and demonstrate their capacity to function as arenas for the expression and exploration of national trauma relating to the Korean war and the division of the Korean peninsula. This article aims to demonstrate that despite the increasing hybridization of Asian media, it remains important to analyse the relationship between K-dramas and domestic audiences in order to better understand the ways in which they address and work through significant social and political concerns for South Korean audiences.

ALZHEIMERS AWARENESS AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN INDIA

ALZHEIMERS AWARENESS AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN INDIA

Isolation, Foreign Places, and Van Morrison’s “Saint Dominic’s Preview”

Isolation, Foreign Places, and Van Morrison’s “Saint Dominic’s Preview” Geoff Munns (bio) In the late 1970s Greil Marcus invited twenty writers to contribute an essay about what rock and roll record they would take to a desert island. The essays came together in the collection Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island.1 I came to this book about thirty years after it was first published, at a time when I was seeking out and researching critical writing about Van Morrison for a study I was doing on the use of place in his songwriting. So M. Mark’s discussion on Morrison’s 1974 live album, It’s Too Late To Stop Now, and Lester Bang’s delving into the lyrical depths of Morrison’s seminal 1968 recording, Astral Weeks, were among those pieces that helped me get closer to an understanding of the ways the songwriter deploys place as a poetic and aural device, and how that both defines and distinguishes his work.2 I was reminded of Stranded in mid-2020 as I sat in my Sydney apartment in COVID-19 isolation and talked over the phone with a friend about how we were both handling the lockdown. “I’m reading that Greil Marcus desert island book,” he told me, “and it seems to be perfect for these times.” He was right, and it got me thinking about my Van Morrison study, and what song of his I would take with me to a desert island that would not only work for me in isolation but would also widely capture his sense of place. My attention was drawn to “Saint Dominic’s Preview” (1972) and the expression of isolation marked out through differences between early Belfast memories and the concerns that now press into the isolation of the San Francisco apartment block. The words and the image of the lonely artist caught within doubts and misgivings seemed, in mood, to capture something of the uncertainties of the current 2020 world. If we accept the suggestion that a song with social isolation as one of its central ideas is a good desert island companion, then I reasoned “Saint Dominic’s Preview” would be a fitting choice. [End Page 44] Furthermore, it is a song that provides a concrete example of the different ways that Morrison utilizes place in his songwriting, highlighting how his songs very often return to and reimagine places through memory, and how there is frequently a fluidity of place and time in their lyrical energies. Added to this, in the song’s often oblique and unsettled series of emblematic spaces are embedded many of the songwriter’s major themes that focus on place—childhood memories, formative musical influences, isolated exile thoughts, music industry blues, and a sense of social and cultural dislocation. “Saint Dominic’s Preview,” then, becomes my Stranded desert island song. ________ When the locations of “Saint Dominic’s Preview” are considered, a picture emerges that highlights many of the different ways Van Morrison employs place. From the opening lines there is a sense of movement that edges restlessly across different places—from the first image of a domestic chore, a city street and a church across the way, to that of a “jagged story block” and a city far removed in distance and time from the comfort of friends and home. Later in the song the scene shifts urgently again between supermarket car parks, country crossroads, railway lines, restaurants, and high-class apartments. As the song proceeds what becomes apparent is that these are also places marking out spaces that are both familiar and foreign, where tensions play out across location and time, between past memories and more immediate and pressing experiences. Beyond descriptive words and phrases, they are also lived “social places,” echoing with the sounds of music and conversation, filled with symbolic objects, caught up with interpersonal relationships. As such, they are embedded with meanings, capturing a range of emotions, including nostalgia, uncertainty, and dislocation. Place thus emerges as a key feature of “Saint Dominic’s Preview.” And this evidence aligns with the general agreement among scholars and critics that “place” is a key poetic device and thematic...

ЗАСНОВНИК МИСТЕЦТВА БАНДУРИ ПЕТРА ЛАХТЮКА НА ТЕРЕНАХ ПОВОЄННОЇ ПОЛЬЩІ

The biography of one person, a native of Volyn (now Rivne region), as in the mirror, reflects the fate of an entire generation of Ukrainian youth - and therefore of our entire nation - throughout the XX century. Ukrainian, a student at Warsaw University Panteleimon Bondarchuk, who, from the time of his participation in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and until the end of his life, bore the well-known name (alias) Petro Lakhtiuk, is serving a horrific 12-year prison sentence in the tundra of the Arctic Circle, but miraculously - prayer and willpower remain alive. Released after the death of J. Stalin, he is revived physically and spiritually, goes to Poland, where he plunges into cultural and musical activities, creating in this country not yet known the art of bandura. For Christian love in the good heart of Peter Lakhtiuk, God rewarded him with a long and happy creative life: he lived a full 94 years (1907-2001). Being able to not fail despite the toughest of tests – that is heroism. To maintain dignity and Christian faith in the face of physical torment and psychological abuse – that too is heroic. To avoid anger and not become an outcast in a foreign country and foreign society – that is also heroism. To artfully play an instrument that is not known in the foreign place is selfless. To throw off downcast thoughts and pessimism, and instead to cultivate joy, beauty, song, and art, that is a blessing of the Holy Spirit. Such is the reality of the quiet heroism of Petro Lakhtiuk. It is quiet, because he was never a promoter of his own talents. He pulled his plow quietly, in accordance with his calling, his talent, and his dedication to hard work. He lived in a terrible time in history: during his lifetime there were two world wars – the first during his childhood and the second when he was an adult. In the newspapers, on radio broadcasts, as well as in literature, the 20th century is rightfully called a bloody century.

Zingen over branden, scheepsrampen en grote buitenlandse catastrofes, 1755-1918

Abstract Singing about fires, ship wrecks and major international catastrophes between 1755 and 1918 Local, national and international solidarity This article focuses on Dutch songs about three different kind of disasters in the period 1755-1918: fires (which occurred in Dutch villages and cities), ship wrecks (both in the Netherlands and abroad) and other foreign catastrophes, such as the earthquake on Martinique (1839) or the floods in Mexico (1888). This popular genre is an important source to understand how people coped with disasters in the past. They were not only used to spread the news, but also to make sense of the events by offering moral and religious lessons. This article investigates how these different types of disaster songs could shape a shared sense of community on the local, national and international level. While songs about fires were often directed at the local community, ballads about shipwrecks appealed to the imagined Dutch community. Songs about big disasters in foreign places, sometimes aimed at raising international solidarity, but they were more often used to strengthen communal feelings at the national level.

Living Kinship in the Pacific ed. by Christina Toren

Reviewed by: Living Kinship in the Pacific ed. by Christina Toren Lorenzo Pule Finau-Cruz Living Kinship in the Pacific, edited by Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels. Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists 4. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. isbn cloth 978-1-78238-577-6; isbn paper 978-1-78533-520-4; 274 pages, illustrations, bibliography, index. Cloth, us$135.00; paper, us$29.95. Edited by Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels, the collected works that make up Living Kinship in the Pacific offer case studies that examine kinship practices throughout the Pacific across both space and time. As Toren and Pauwels explain, “The book’s objective is straightforward: to provide case studies of contemporary Pacific kinship, and in so doing arrive at an understanding of what is currently happening to kinship in an area where deep historical links provide for close and useful comparison” (1). More provocatively, the collection [End Page 624] does not merely aspire to compare and document kinship in the region. Rather, there is an expressed intent to situate kinship practices within a larger understanding of history as living and integral to contemporary practices and kinship-related worldviews. In Toren and Pauwel’s estimation, “What is under discussion here is not history as something external to us, confined to the past, nor history as it is known or generally understood, nor history as it is written nor the personal history we can recollect and tell to others, but rather history as it is lived” (3). This volume’s endorsement of history as lived and fundamental to kinship practices of the past and present aligns with wider calls among Pacific scholars to listen to and engage deeply with stories, for it is through the stories of community that history truly comes to life. Living Kinship in the Pacific brings together just a few of the many stories of the Pacific. The eleven chapters, divided into three sections, weave together both academic and practical aspects of research through the experiences of its scholars, clearly illustrating the diversity in kinship practices in the Pacific. They primarily employ ethnographic approaches to kinship and related issues in Fiji, Tonga, Sāmoa, Tokelau, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan. Anthropologists Unaisi Nabobo-Baba and Jara Hulkenberg do well in exploring communal kinship in their respective contributions, which focus specifically on Fiji and explore kinship through “gifting.” Drawing on the classic anthropological concept of “the gift,” the contributors advocate for understanding and appreciating gifting practices as more than just birthday or Christmas presents that will ultimately go to waste. In the context of Pacific kinship, it encompasses far more. As Nabobo-Baba describes, gifting represents veikauwaitaki (mutual concern and empathy), which is the foundation of Fijian kinship. She recounts the story of the gifting of a tabua (whale tooth) from one chief to another as a means of solidifying veidinadininati vakavanua vakaturaga (his chiefly promise). Though this kind of promise and the gifting associated with it are replete with complex layers of meaning, veikauwaitaki lies at the core. This demonstrates concern for the welfare of kin and others, as well as empathy for others’ troubles (23). Nabobo-Baba thus shows that gifting in the context of kinship is ingrained into societal values that are practiced by the community as a whole. Veikauwaitaki is more than just a word; rather, it guides social actions that are acknowledged by all levels of the community. Hulkenberg’s chapter explores the ways in which practices of exchange extend past the homeland and into foreign lands through the processes of migration. As migration occurs, kinship becomes transnational and transformative in many different ways. Because resources may differin foreign places, so too do the gifts that are presented or exchanged. For example, in looking at Fijians in the United Kingdom, Hulkenberg illustrates that money has become prominent in acts of gifting (76). Though it is important to acknowledge that items frequently gifted in the home-land, such as tabua, are often replaced by items available in foreign lands, [End Page 625] Hulkenberg makes it clear that the obligations and significance of kinship and gifting remain. She argues that people must know themselves through retaining their virtue...

Development of guide stick navigation for blind person using digital compass and global positioning system

The limited use of navigation technology poses a risk to blind person becoming lost, while in a foreign place and causing them to rarely travel. The purpose of this study is to design guiding sticks for blind person by tracking and homing. The position of coordinates and wind direction is processed into information on sound signals and vibrations. The method used in this research is GPS bearing and inverse angle, using compass and ultrasonic sensors. Afterwards, the data output in this system is directional information in the form of sound, besides information in the form of an obstacle when in front of the sensor. The test results prove that the GPS bearing method can produce a more stable direction. However, GPS accuracy can decrease when it is blocked by trees and buildings. While the inverse angle method, GPS data is stored on the data logger, which does not require GPS accuracy when determining direction. The angle of the direction is more accurate if the average angle when tracking is not too wide.

Losing, looking for and finding each other again. The visual diary of Anna Di Prospero between reality and immaginary

Losing, looking for and finding each other again through the photographic objective, recalling familiar and foreign places and relationships, unconscious and secret imaginary: this is the fil rouge of the self-portraits of Anna Di Prospero, whose photographic production has been analyzed in the thesis of Specialization from which this article is taken.