Transcultural Identity Constructions in a Changing World

This volume takes a broad outlook on the concept of transculturality. Contributions from 19 authors and specialists, of almost as many diverse origins, grapple with this concept, each in their own way. How can transculturality be described? How can it help us understand our world? Many of the chapters deal with literary texts, others with the stories told in movies, drama, and visual art. There are texts about the complexity of the European Burqa-Ban debate, the negative aspects of Portuguese multiculturalism, or the border-crossing experiences of Filipino immigrants in Ireland. Several chapters examine stereotypes, the idea of movement, the dissolution of cultural borders, or the nature of bilingual writing. It is a unique contribution to the field, on a virtually global scale.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Irene Gilsenan Nordin/Chatarina Edfeldt/Lung-Lung Hu/Herbert Jonsson/André Leblanc: Introduction: Transcultural Identity Constructions in a Changing World – Miguel Vale de Almeida: Multicultural: Stories of Political and Cultural (Mis)Understandings – Alan Grossman: Curiously Mediating Identity Formations Across Borders and Interdisciplinary Boundaries: Transcultural Film Practice – M. I. Franklin: Veil Dressing and the Gender Geopolitics of «What Not to Wear» – Christina Kullberg: Interview With Haitian Canadian Novelist Dany Laferriere, de l’Académie francaise – Mattias Aronsson: Ethnic Differentiation and Assimilation in Marguerite Duras’s Indochinese Texts – André Leblanc: Transcultural Identity as a Personal Myth: The Case of Amélie Nothomb – Britta Olinder: Cultural Relations and Aboriginal Identity in Sally Morgan’s My Place – Christophe Premat/Françoise Sule: Remembering the Migrant Identity: A Comparative Study of Les Pieds Sales, by Edem Awumey, and Ru, by Kim Thúy – Christina Kullberg: «We Have to Keep Moving»: Transnational Witnessing in Dany Laferriere’s The World is Moving Around Me – Ching-Chung Lin: Transculturality in Thomas Mann’s Novella Tonio Kröger – Emma Duester: Travelling Art Cultures: Transcultural Identities Illustrated by Baltic Artists – Lung-Lung Hu: Legal and Cultural Identity: A Case of Adultery in the Chinese Story «Drying Clothes» – Hiroko Inose: Not Crossing the Boundary: The Untranslatable in Japanese-English Bilingual Literature – Letizia Fusini: The Dao of Writing: Transcultural Literary Identity in Gao Xingjian’s Novel Soul Mountain – Chu-chueh Cheng: Old Fear in New Face: Yellow Peril of the Twenty-First Century in Sherlock – Margarida Esteves Pereira: Fallen Women on the Contemporary Global Screen: Transnational and Transhistorical Adaptations of Eça de Queirós’s The Crime of Father Amaro and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Tin Kei Wong: Globalisation and Cultural Contact in Crash (2004) and Babel (2005) – Anita Purcell Sjölund: My Name is Gary Cooper, But it is also Samoan.

About the Author :
Irene Gilsenan Nordin is Professor Emerita of English, Dalarna University, Sweden. Chatarina Edfeldt is Lecturer in Portuguese, Lung-Lung Hu is Lecturer in Chinese, Herbert Jonsson is Lecturer in Japanese, and André Leblanc is Lecturer in French – all at the School of Humanities and Media Studies, Dalarna University, Sweden. All are members of the Transcultural Identities research group at Dalarna University.