The cultural politics of curriculum discourse: Cultural representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) textbooks

Culture strongly embeds in the formation and evolution of civilizations, virtues, and knowledge. It is not only practiced by its bearers but also seeps into the society having varied ethnicities resulting in the cultural diversity and educational institutions are chief mean of culture expansion. Cultural diversity influences student’s education, personality, morality, intellectual capability, and environment. Hence, this research examines the impacts of cultural diversity on university students’ several aspects. It is a cross-sectional quantitative research using survey method. The population is private universities’ students of Karachi, sample size is 377 selected through simple random sampling. For data collection Likert scale is used and data is analyzed through one sample t-test on SPSS. The interpreted results show positive impacts of cultural diversity on students’ academic progress, workplace potentialities, and society development. Furthermore, the findings support research purpose and suggest to keep the cultural diversity protected and promoted along with assuring safety of students, providence and implementation of several resources for the representation of different cultures in educational institutions, and to train students and teachers to build resilience for the people belonging to diverse communities. Carefully following these precise steps would assure the solidarity and positive outcomes of students regarding learning experiences.

This article examines the intermedial representation of Indian soldier’s lived experiences across literature and cinema. Drawing upon intermedial theory, particularly Irina O. Rajewsky’s typology of medial transposition and intermedial reference, the study analyses how soldier’s subjectivities, trauma, ethical ambivalence, and everyday realities are articulated and transformed as narratives move between textual and audio-visual forms. Focusing on Partition literature, especially the short fiction of Saadat Hasan Manto and Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and mainstream Hindi war cinema, notably J. P. Dutta’s Border, the article demonstrates how literature often privileges interiority and moral ambiguity, while popular cinema tends toward spectacle, collectivized heroism, and nationalist affect. At the same time, the article identifies emergent cinematic strategies that reintroduce testimonial and literary modes. By foregrounding intermedial processes, the article contributes to South Asian cultural studies, film studies, and war representation scholarship

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are increasingly adopted in cultural heritage research to address challenges of semantic heterogeneity, data fragmentation, and cross-institutional knowledge integration. Despite the rapid growth of KG-based heritage systems, a comprehensive and methodologically rigorous synthesis of existing applications remains limited. To address this gap, this study conducts a ROSES-based systematic review of KG applications in cultural heritage, aiming to examine prevailing application domains, methodological patterns, and emerging research trends. Following the Reporting Standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses (ROSES), a structured search was conducted in Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. After duplicate removal, screening, eligibility assessment, and quality appraisal, 248 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2024 were retained for final synthesis. A mixed-method approach combining descriptive analysis and thematic synthesis was employed to analyze KG construction strategies, technological components, application contexts, and reported outcomes. The results indicate that KGs are primarily applied in five interconnected areas: digital recording and preservation, knowledge management and integration, protection and restoration support, cultural transmission and education, and research and innovation. Methodologically, the literature reveals a transition from ontology-driven and manually curated knowledge models toward hybrid approaches integrating artificial intelligence techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning. However, persistent challenges remain, including ontology alignment, scalability, evaluation inconsistency, and limited cross-project interoperability. This review contributes a consolidated and transparent evidence base for KG applications in cultural heritage and advances a conceptual understanding of KGs as socio-technical infrastructures that mediate cultural knowledge representation and interpretation. The findings offer methodological insights and practical implications for researchers, heritage professionals, and system designers, while highlighting directions for future interdisciplinary research.

In the context of digital technology reshaping cultural communication, digital innovation of cultural intellectual property has become an important issue. This paper takes the game "Black Myth: Wukong" as the main case, around the theme of "cultural IP innovation path based on digital media", discusses how game modeling technology can be used as a translation language to achieve the extraction, reconstruction, and meaning regeneration of Chinese traditional culture. Through case analysis and text research, combined with cultural transmediation theory and digital media perspective, the study found that games transformed cultural heritage such as buildings and statues into interactive digital assets through high-precision scanning, procedural generation, environmental narrative and other technical means, significantly enhancing cultural immersion and reducing the cognitive barrier. At the same time, the game has built an open transmedia storytelling ecology, which has promoted players to change from receivers to participants and co-creators, effectively stimulated global players' interest in exploring China's deep culture, and driven the development of real cultural tourism. The research shows that game modeling technology is not only a cultural representation tool but also an important medium to promote the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture, providing a feasible path for the innovation and cross-cultural communication of cultural IP in the digital era.

ABSTRACT This study explores the potential of a/r/tography as a visual methodology in the context of heritage tourism, integrating academic, scientific, and artistic dimensions. Rooted in Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER), it employs artistic photography to reframe visual perceptions of Jesuit Guaraní Missions heritage sites. The research follows a qualitative approach, incorporating (auto)biographical elements, as well as documentary and bibliographic research. Photographic expeditions were conducted across 12 historical sites, including seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites and five national heritage sites in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. The resulting visual compositions form an unprecedented photographic essay, revealing new layers of cultural memory and tourism representation. This study understands artistic photography as a language capable of establishing other possible realities through aesthetic, symbolic, and narrative choices. By fostering educational engagement, it highlights the role of photography in heritage awareness and transdisciplinary learning. The findings offer fresh insights into the visual positioning of heritage sites, particularly those in a state of ruin, and emphasize the potential of a/r/tography in expanding tourism methodologies. This research contributes to discussions on cultural heritage representation, proposing artistic photography as a means to mediate, reinterpret, and sensitize audiences to the historical and aesthetic values embedded in these spaces.

ABSTRACT This study examines the ethnomathematical components inherent in the design, patterns, and cultural significance of the woven tandok, a traditional artifact of the Batak Toba community in Indonesia. Using an ethnographic approach, the study involved thirteen key informants to explore the relationship between mathematical concepts and cultural practices. Data were collected through participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and documentation of tandok artefacts. The findings show that the construction of tandok reflects four fundamental ethnomathematical activities: counting, measuring, designing geometric forms, and determining spatial orientation. These practices relate to specific mathematical concepts, particularly geometric properties and structures. The study highlights that tandok is both a geometric form and a cultural representation of the Batak Toba worldview. Although teachers and students can recognize geometric elements in woven tandok, these have not been incorporated into classroom mathematics instruction. Therefore, this study recommends integrating tandok-based ethnomathematical activities into elementary mathematics curricula.

This paper takes Blake C. Scott’s Unpacked: A History of Caribbean Tourism as its central archive to trace the historical continuities that shape contemporary tourism in the Caribbean. It argues that leisure in the region has never been innocent but has functioned as a neocolonial system structured by infrastructures, labor hierarchies, and cultural representations. Scott’s history demonstrates how imperial projects such as the Panama Canal, mosquito eradication campaigns, and Pan American Airways transformed the Caribbean from a feared ‘white man’s graveyard’ into a consumable paradise, embedding racial and class inequalities within the very mechanics of mobility. Hotels like the Tivoli and the Havana Hilton epitomized a service economy sustained by racialized labor, where the ‘service smile’ masked exploitation. Meanwhile, travel writing, Hemingway’s dispatches, and airline advertisements naturalized the tourist gaze, erasing colonial violence and ecological transformation. By situating today’s overtourism, characterized by cruise ship congestion, environmental degradation, and service dependency, within this historical arc, the paper highlights how contemporary crises are intensifications of older colonial patterns. Bringing together historical, postcolonial, and ecocritical lenses, it calls for reimagining tourism not as extraction but as reciprocity, advocating models of slow tourism, ecological justice, and regional cooperation to resist the entitlements of neocolonial leisure economies.

Racial prejudice during the selection of jurors continues to impair the impartiality and fairness of the legal system, with far-reaching effects on judicial decisions as well as public confidence. Though legal reforms like Batson v. Kentucky have sought to de-emphasize explicit discrimination, unconscious racial prejudices remain, frequently unalleviated by conventional legal systems. This research examines how intercultural communication approaches based on communication theories of framing theory, narrative persuasion, and critical discourse analysis can help address systemic racial differences in jury formation proceedings. Through redefining the problem from a legal perspective to a communication-oriented research inquiry, this research addresses how juror decision-making is shaped by cultural stories, cognitive biases, and mediation representation of race and justice. Following a qualitative approach, the current research utilizes a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that adheres to the PRISMA guidelines. The 50 identified studies yielded eight that qualified and were included based on inclusion criteria and analyzed via thematic analysis. The results identify three main themes: (1) the persistent persistence of racial discrimination in jury formation throughout jurisdictions; (2) the contribution of intercultural communication to providing culturally competent juridical atmospheres; and (3) the effect of structural reforms, which include intercultural training and diverse compositions of juries, to induce fairness. Moreover, this research compares global outlook, examining jury selection procedures and communication-oriented interventions within Europe, South America, and Asia. The implications support institutional incorporation of intercultural communication tactics towards countering racial bias and increasing the legitimacy of legal decision-making world-wide.

This study investigates how students and teachers in Japanese language programs at Indonesian universities perceive cultural representations in widely used textbooks and how these perceptions inform the need for intercultural-oriented learning design. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach, data were collected through a questionnaire completed by 68 undergraduate students and semi-structured interviews with six experienced instructors. Quantitative data were analyzed descriptively, while qualitative responses were thematically coded based on Byram’s Intercultural Communicative Competence and Moran’s 4P cultural framework. Findings reveal that both students and teachers value the integration of linguistic and cultural learning but recognize an imbalance between grammatical focus and intercultural contextualization. Marugoto is perceived as culturally authentic and communicative, while Minna no Nihongo is praised for structural clarity but limited in fostering cultural reflection. Students expressed a preference for interactive, visual, and relatable cultural content, whereas teachers emphasized their mediating role in linking cultural concepts to learners’ experiences. The study concludes that an integrative textbook design, combining grammatical rigor with reflective intercultural engagement is essential for developing intercultural competence. The proposed 4P + IC framework highlights how cultural representation can serve not only as learning material but as a bridge to intercultural understanding in Japanese language education.

Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus) have long been recognized in China as key agents of long-distance connectivity, based largely on iconographic and textual evidence, while osteological data have rarely been incorporated into discussion. Because these data have seldom been examined within a unified analytical framework, current knowledge of the development and shifting patterns of camel-human relationships remains fragmentary. To address this gap, the present study provides a detailed analysis of available camel osteological material from archaeological contexts in northern China and integrates it with broader archaeological and historical evidence. Our results identify diverse forms of interaction across time and space, including camel exploitation for transport and labor, consumption, funerary practices, and craft production. Spatiotemporal patterns indicate a persistent concentration of osteological remains in China's northern frontier zones, whereas the record remains sporadic in central regions despite increasing camel representations in material culture and texts. This enduring distribution reflects ecological suitability and sustained economic integration in arid zones. The absence of such conditions in Central China meant that camels were never fully incorporated into local everyday life; instead, they primarily operated within imperial logistical and political systems and came to be culturally important through their role in broader exchange networks.

The growing popularity of video games as a means of historical representation has significantly changed how people understand and experience the past. This study analyzes alternative representations of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) in the video game Fate/Grand Order, with a focus on the figure of Joan of Arc and the narrative construction of the concept of "historical singularity." Using a qualitative approach combining historical methods and virtual ethnography, documented historical events are compared with the game's narrative. The results reveal fundamental differences in chronology, characters, and conflict motives, reflecting a reinterpretation of the past from a transhistorical and fictional perspective. While the game offers pedagogical opportunities to spark interest in history, it also poses the risk of misinterpretation if not accompanied by critical historical literacy. It concludes that digital history, as presented in Fate/Grand Order, must be approached with a reflective eye to foster a deeper understanding of the relationship between historical reality and its cultural representation in digital media.

Religious buildings such as synagogues, churches, and mosques, which are central to religious, cultural, and social life, have served important purposes throughout history as sacred spaces where art, architecture and performance converge. Although these sacred spaces offer unique spatial contexts that deepen individuals’ spiritual experiences through their physical, symbolic, and atmospheric qualities, empirical studies examining this relationship remain limited. This study aims to investigate the impact of biophilic design features within the Yivli Minaret Mosque, one of the oldest Islamic monuments in Antalya, constructed during the 13th-century Anatolian Seljuk Period, on the spiritual experiences of congregation members, and to identify the key psychological mechanisms shaping this relationship. The methodology of the study is based on a mixed-methods approach that combines expert assessments conducted using the Biophilic Interior Design Matrix (BID-M), which integrates proven scientific data with artistic perspective within a historical and symbolic religious structure, with survey data obtained from 359 mosque congregation members. The findings indicate that the mosque exhibits medium-to-high levels of biophilic design characteristics and that the relationship with nature is established indirectly through historical, cultural, and ecological contexts and symbolic representations rather than directly through natural elements. In this respect, the biophilic characteristics of sacred spaces are not merely an artistic and aesthetic approach, but an element that supports individuals’ relationship with nature and their restorative and spiritual experience. Overall, the study reveals that spiritual experience cannot be considered independently of its spatial context and that sacred spaces related to nature support spiritual experience.

This article investigates how the representation of Brazil in A Cruising Voyage Round the World (1928), by Woodes Rogers, reverberates through the English Language literary tradition, influencing Robinson Crusoe (1920), by Daniel Defoe, and later being re-signified in Foe (1987), by J.M. Coetzee. The analysis draws on Julia Kristeva’s (2005) concept of intertextuality, Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism (1981), and Gérard Genette’s notions of hypertext and hypotext (2010), aiming to understand how these works construct, perpetuate, and challenge colonial representations of Brazil. While Robinson Crusoe recovers the exploratory and imperialist perspective found in Rogers’s travel narrative, Foe subverts this tradition by highlighting silenced voices and questioning the colonial discourse. Thus, this study proposes the existence of a symbolic intertextual network that connects these texts and reveals how travel writing and fiction shape cultural representations over time.

Geography textbooks are not passive repositories of knowledge but powerful pedagogical artefacts that shape how students understand space, culture, environment, and global interdependence. This study applies a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of 53 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2004 and 2024 to systematically map dominant research themes, methodological approaches, and research gaps in school geography textbook studies. The synthesis identifies recurring attention to curriculum alignment, cultural representation, geographical skills, and the role of visuals, alongside a strong methodological reliance on content analysis. At the same time, the review highlights persistent structural, conceptual, and methodological gaps: an overrepresentation of European contexts, a narrow focus on national identity and climate change, and limited use of user-centered, classroom-based, and longitudinal research designs. A key contribution of this review lies in distinguishing between quality gaps in textbook design and research gaps in scholarship. By doing so, it underscores the need for a more inclusive, contextualized, and methodologically plural research agenda. By consolidating two decades of international scholarship, this review offers both a state-of-the-art synthesis and a roadmap for reimagining geography textbooks as strategic tools for cultivating spatial reasoning, critical thinking, and global citizenship in the twenty-first century.

This article presents an in-depth comparative analysis of the linguistic and cultural representation of the concept “goodness” in English and Uzbek languages. It explores how this moral category is expressed through vocabulary, idioms, and proverbs, and how these expressions reveal the cultural and ethical values of both nations. Drawing upon theories of conceptual linguistics and moral semantics, the paper discusses how language functions as a tool for reflecting and shaping moral thought. The findings demonstrate that English and Uzbek conceptualize goodness through different cultural lenses: English emphasizes personal virtue and ethical decision-making, while Uzbek foregrounds communal responsibility, empathy, and divine justice.

Yama, originally transmitted to China as a Buddhist deity presiding over postmortem judgment, underwent a profound transformation through sustained engagement with indigenous Chinese ethical, cosmological, and cultural traditions. Rather than a process of passive assimilation, this study conceptualizes the Sinicization of Yama as an active form of cultural translation, through which Buddhist moral authority was selectively reconfigured within familiar frameworks of Confucian ethics, Daoist cosmology, and vernacular religious imagination. Drawing on historical texts, religious narratives, and popular cultural representations, this article demonstrates how Yama functioned as a symbolic mechanism of moral governance that extended ethical regulation beyond formal legal institutions and into everyday life. The bureaucratization of the underworld, the circulation of moral narratives, and the incorporation of indigenous sacred geographies collectively contributed to the legitimation and internalization of moral norms. From a contemporary perspective, the continued re-signification of Yama in modern cultural forms complicates linear narratives of secularization. Even when detached from explicit religious belief, Yama persists as a symbolic resource for reflecting on moral responsibility, justice, and human agency. This study thus highlights the enduring social functions of religious symbolism within both historical and modern contexts of moral regulation.

Purpose of the study: This study aims to examine the cultural representation of pesugihan in the drama script Pesugihan Nayan Tula by Afrion using a literary anthropology approach to reveal embedded cultural values, belief systems, and socio-cultural structures reflected in the narrative Methodology: This study employed a qualitative descriptive method using a literary anthropology approach. The primary data source was the 2016 published drama script by Laboratorium Sastra Medan. Data were collected through documentation techniques and analyzed using cultural category frameworks based on Koentjaraningrat’s anthropological theory and Ratna’s literary anthropology perspective. Main Findings: The findings reveal that pesugihan is represented as a cultural belief system rooted in animism, ritual practices, myth, and social structure. The script portrays traditional systems including religious beliefs, ritual offerings, supernatural agreements, and socio-cultural conflicts reflecting moral deviation and community value transformation. Novelty/Originality of this study: This study offers a focused literary anthropology analysis on pesugihan within modern Indonesian drama, integrating classical anthropological theory with contemporary literary text analysis. It advances cultural-literary studies by contextualizing mystical economic practices as structured cultural phenomena within dramatic narrative discourse.

Postcolonial literature has played a crucial role in foregrounding the voices of marginalized communities whose experiences were historically excluded from dominant colonial narratives. One of the most significant concepts within postcolonial studies is the notion of the subaltern, which refers to those social groups that remain outside the structures of power and representation within hegemonic discourse. Colonial regimes not only imposed political and economic domination but also controlled systems of knowledge and cultural representation, thereby silencing indigenous voices and rewriting histories from the perspective of imperial authority. In response to these distortions, postcolonial writers and theorists have sought to recover the experiences of the subaltern and challenge the politics of representation embedded within colonial discourse. This research article examines the emergence of subaltern voices in postcolonial texts and analyzes how literature becomes a space for contesting hegemonic power structures. It explores the theoretical framework of subaltern studies and the politics of representation articulated by major thinkers, while also investigating the narrative strategies employed by postcolonial writers to represent marginalized communities. The study further examines how issues of voice, agency, identity, gender, and cultural memory shape the representation of subaltern experiences in postcolonial narratives. By analyzing selected literary works from postcolonial contexts, the article demonstrates that literature functions not only as a medium of artistic expression but also as a site of political resistance and cultural recovery. Ultimately, the politics of representation in postcolonial texts reveals the complexities involved in giving voice to historically marginalized groups and underscores the importance of literature in challenging structures of domination and reconstructing alternative histories.

This study was conducted by using different ways to analyse participant interest through combining qualitative methods that looked at Culture from Traditional Chinese Society and how that reflects on Genshin Impact and Quantitative Methods to determine the overall influence of Culture from Traditional Chinese Society and Genshin Impact. Through this approach, our focus was the visual representations of Lions from Lion Dance Tradition within Genshin Impact, and how these images contrasted to both the narrative storyline and environmental aspects associated with Chinese Culture. Quantitative data were collected through a survey of 65 players to measure their perceptions, interest levels, and engagement with the cultural representations presented in the game. Qualitative analysis was conducted through visual and content analysis of character design, narrative context, and game mechanics to identify how Chinese cultural elements are constructed and communicated. The findings from this mixed methods approach indicate that the visual and narrative representation of Chinese culture in Genshin Impact positively influences player interest and stimulates curiosity about the cultural themes depicted in the game. These results suggest that digital games have the potential to serve as effective media for introducing cultural representation through immersive visual and interactive experiences.