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Transcultural Studies: Different Approaches

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Different Schools of Thought

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Different Ways of Doing Transcultural Studies

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Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies, University of Muenster

• “The fields of postcolonial, transnational and transcultural studies have several things in common. For instance, they all have a very strong interest in the formation and re-formation of cultures, cultural contact, cultural mixtures, as well as the relations between culture and politics.

• Within this common framework, the three fields often approach these issues from different angles:

• For instance, postcolonial studies (as the term suggests) developed out of a critique of the legacy of colonialism: from the discovery of the Americas onwards, European powers have colonized peoples in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. This entailed enormous political and economic power imbalances which also gave rise to very specific forms of cultural production (e.g., concerning the reproduction of racist ideologies in literature). Colonialism was also a significant step towards globalisation: it established contact between languages, cultures and literatures which had hardly (or never) been in contact before, and this in turn gave rise to new, mixed, cultural forms. In the wake of decolonisation, new post-independent traditions have developed (e.g., new national states wanted to foster their own national culture). Researching and teaching such phenomena is the remit of postcolonial studies.

• While colonial and postcolonial thoughts are often (though not always!) based on the existence of nation states and national identities, transnational studies focuses on moments and phenomena where national boundaries and national ideologies are transcended and where borders are transgressed.

• National boundaries are not the only boundaries which are transgressed and become unstable: similar things happen with cultural boundaries. Partly, this is also recognised by postcolonial studies. Transcultural studies, however, goes further: it places even greater emphasis on questioning neat distinctions between coloniser and the colonised, and also studies phenomena of culture contact and cultural mixing outside formally colonial or post-colonial contexts (e.g. concerning the Turkish diaspora in Germany; or Philippinemigrant workers in the Middle East). In an increasingly globalized world, transcultural phenomena become ever more important.

• Postcolonial, transnational and transcultural phenomena – such as the anglophone literatures from around the world – require new forms of reading. If cultures are considered open and dynamic systems, then cultural production requires interdisciplinary work that goes beyond compartmentalized disciplines. Thus, some of the most exciting work produced today crosses disciplinary boundaries between literatures, visual arts, minority studies, history, anthropology, political sciences and others.”

• SOURCE: http://www.uni-muenster.de/Anglistik/en/ptts/General/

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Muenster

Post-colonial Studies

Trans-national Studies

Trans-cultural Studies

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•Critique of colonialism

•Cultural productionPostcolonial

•Borders transgressed

•National ideologies transcendedTransnational

•Diaspora

•Migrant workersTranscultural

Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies, University of Muenster

Rey Ty

Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies, University of Muenster

“Here are some more examples of topics studied within PTTS:

• Colonialism and imperialism

• Colonial discourse analysis

• Resistance and liberation movements, independence, and decolonisation

• Ethnicity, race, racism

• Cultural forms which support existing political programmes and national identities

• Cultural forms (e.g. minorities living on both sides of a state border which they don’t recognise) which destabilise existing concepts of nationhood

• Regional and minority literatures

• Indigenous literatures and cultures

• Migrant literature

• Diaspora literatures

• Transcultural writing

• Transnational reception of texts and films

• Intertextuality and intermediality

• Varieties of English (e.g. Indian English, Australian English, Caribbean Creole etc.)

• Comparative approaches to literary and cultural studies

• Historiography and cultural memory

• Women's writing (and the relations between gender, race, nation and class)

• Agency, identity, subjectivity”

• SOURCE: http://www.uni-muenster.de/Anglistik/en/ptts/General/

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MuensterColonialism

& Imperialism

Liberation Movements

Ethnicity, Race,

RacismMinorities

Indigenous Cultures & Literature

Migrant DiasporasVarieties of

English

Gender, Race,

Nation, Class

Agency, Identity

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Postcolonial

• Colonialism & imperialism

• Colonial discourse analysis

• Liberation movements

• Ethnicity, race, racism

•Minorities

• Indigenous

Transnational

•Migrant

•Diaspora

•Varieties of English

• Transnational reception of texts & films

Transcultural

• Comparative approaches to literary & cultural studies

•Gender, race, nation, & class

•Agency, identity, & subjectivity

Postcolonial, Transnational and Transcultural Studies, University of Muenster

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Transcultural Studies Journal• Ruprecht-Karls-Universität

Heidelberg• “Transcultural Studies aims to function as a forum for

research on cultural, social, and regional formations that have been constituted and transformed through extensive contacts with other regions and cultures. While we view spatial mobility and circulation as a central dimension of transcultural processes, the latter are not synonymous with or reducible to the former. Research on transcultural perspectives is confronted with two major challenges: to uncover the dynamics of the multiple ways in which difference is negotiated and to find a conceptual language that can describe the transactions built into relationships across frontiers and as they unfold in local contexts. The journal welcomes contributions which investigate such processes from different disciplinary positions and reflect on methods of transcultural research.”

• Source: http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/transcultural/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope

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Cultural, social, & regional

formations

Contacts with other

regions & cultures

Negotiate differences

Transcultural Studies Journal

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University of Heidelberg Transcultural Studies• “The M.A. in Transcultural Studies is interdisciplinary and transregional in

character. It follows the approach that cultures do not exist in ethnically closed, linguistically homogeneous and territorially limited spaces. Instead, they constitute themselves through transformations and interweaving that results from extensive contacts and relations. Mobility and connections moulded civilizations long before the development of global capitalism and modern communication technologies.

• The emphasis of the M.A. in Transcultural Studies thus lies on transcultural processes in history and the present, and the related institutional and individual negotiating strategies in the respective regional and historical context, manifested in texts, images, sounds and other media. Geographically the study programme focuses on Asia, specifically East and South Asia, in relation to Europe.

• The content of the course is divided into three main study foci. In “Society, Economy and Governance” the subject of investigation is political, social and economic interaction and exchange processes; global issues like migration, or consumer behaviour are discussed. „Knowledge, Belief and Religion" is concerned with religious practices and ideologies, as with preserving and transferring knowledge within and between different groups and region. "Visual, Media and Material Culture" examines concepts like authenticity, agency and mobility with respect to the production, presentation and critical reception of images, films and objects.”

• SOURCE: http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/courses/prospective/academicprograms/transcultural_studies.html

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Not ethnically closed

Not linguistically homogeneous

Not territorially

limited space

Mobility

Connections

Inter-disciplinary & transregional

Institutional & individual negotiating

stratgies

University of Heidelberg Transcultural Studies

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East Asia

South Asia

Europe

University of Heidelberg Transcultural Studies

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Center for Transcultural Studies

• Charles Taylor, etc. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/transcult/whoweare.html

• CTS publishes Public Culture (journal): “An interdisciplinary journal of transnational cultural studies” http://www.publicculture.org

• “In the more than twenty years of its existence, Public Culture has established itself as a prize-winning, field-defining cultural studies journal. Public Culture seeks a critical understanding of the global cultural flows and the cultural forms of the public sphere that define the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. As such, the journal provides a forum for the discussion of the places and occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public phenomena, manifested in everything from highly particular and localized events in popular or folk culture to global advertising, consumption, and information networks.” http://www.publicculture.org/info

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Teachers College Columbia University International & Transcultural Studies

• The Department of International and Transcultural Studies hosts two graduate programs that offer degrees at the masters, advanced masters, and doctoral levels:

• Anthropology

• International and Comparative Education

• The two programs have a long list of distinguished faculty and alumni that have changed academic thought and professional practice in their respective fields.

• The Anthropology and Education program has a strong commitment to advance scholarship and innovative practices in education in and outside the classroom, in the United States and abroad, using ethnographic methods. Its faculty and students closely collaborate with scholars, researchers, and practitioners across Teachers College and in the wider Columbia University community.

• The International and Comparative Education program was established in 1899 making it the oldest graduate program in the United States, possibly in the world. It is also the largest program with several professional and geographic concentrations that help advance students expertise and skills. The program has produced leaders in international organizations, government as well as in academia who have shaped education in developing countries, fragile states, and advanced economies.

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International &

Transcultural Studies

AnthropologyInternational

& Comparative Education

Ethnography

Teachers College Columbia University International & Transcultural Studies

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Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies• “L'Institut d'études Transtextuelles et Transculturelles (IETT) est un centre de recherche rattaché à la Faculté des langues de l'Université Jean Moulin -

Lyon, et membre fondateur de l'Institut International d'Etudes Transculturelles et Diasporiques (International Institute for Transcultural and DiasporicStudies or IITDS), qui compte, parmi ses partenaires : Liverpool Hope University (UK), l'Université de Chypre (Chypre) et l'Université Sun Yat-sen (Chine).

• L'IETT est également membre du réseau EastAsiaNet (European Research School Network of Contemporary East Asian Studies or EAN) et, par ce biais, membre et acteur dans le réseau RASEM (Studies of Regionalism in the ASEM context) qui dépend de l'ASEF (Asia Europe Foundation). » http://www.iett.eu

• « The Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies (Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles or IETT) is a French government ministry fully approved and funded research structure. Its mission is to provide a research environment for doctoral students, visiting scholars and local and national researchers.

• The IETT is a member of the International Institute for Transcultural and Diasporic Studies or IITDS together with Liverpool Hope University (UK), University of Cyprus and Sun Yat-sen University, Canton. The IETT participates in the Liverpool European Chinatown Museum project (website). The IETT is also a full member of the EastAsiaNet or European Research School Network of Contemporary East Asian Studies, and a member and actor in the worldwide network RASEM (Regionalism in the ASEM context) which is a funded programme of ASEF (the Asia Europe Foundation).” http://www.iett.eu/index_english.html

• “The Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies (French name the 'Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles and Transculturelles – IETT) is a research institute based in Lyon, France. It focusses on transnational and transdisciplinary approaches to questions of textual and cultural representations of"nations", minorities, globalization, and diasporic communities. Its current director is Gregory B. Lee.

• The Institute is a constituent partner of the International Institute for Diasporic and Transcultural Studies (IIDTS), a transnational institute incorporating Jean Moulin University (Lyon, France), the University of Cyprus, Sun Yat-sen University (Canton, China) and Liverpool Hope University (UK). This is a dedicated research network operating in a transdisciplinary manner and focussed on cultural representation (and self-representation) of diasporic communities throughout the world. The institute sponsors the trilingual academic journal Transtext(e)s-Transcultures: A Journal of Global Cultural Studies.”

• Transtext(e)s-Transcultures: A Journal of Global Cultural Studies

• SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Transtextual_and_Transcultural_Studies

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Transnational

Transdisciplinary

Textual & cultural

represent-ations of…

Nations,

Minorities,

Globalization,

& Diasporic communities

Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies

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Border & Transcultural Studies Research Circle (BTCS) University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Global Diasporas: Communities of Exile and Migration

• “Global diasporas are proliferating in the increasingly transtional landscapes of the late twentieth century. Violent dislocations of whole populations as well as massive movements of people seeking safety, freedom, work, and better lives for themselves and their families seem ever more common as borders become contested and porous. Refugee populations, exiles, and migrants around the globe have created what Arjun Appadurai has termed the "global ethnoscape" of postmodernity, with its intensification of intercultural contact, transcultural traffic, and hybridic cultural formations. Suffering and opportunity abut in the midst of such demographic shifts. The chasm between those forced into movement and those choosing it, between those destitute and those privileged, seems ever more gaping. But are these conditions so new or is there a history of different diasporas in different times and places that can shed light on contemporary diasporic situations? What in fact do we mean by diaspora and what do the different peoples who invoke the term mean by using it? Does diaspora always involve a forcible expulsion from the homeland, which is then reconstituted in dream, desire, and longing by a wandering people, as in the classic diasporas of the Jews, the Armenians, and the scattered peoples of African descent? If not, what are the other conditions that produce the cultural consciousness of diasporic identity? What is the meaning of diaspora where refugees or exiles fear to go "home"? For those who carry "home" with them, like a turtle with its house on its back, as Gloria Anzaldua writes? For those who move back and forth between "home" and elsewhere? For those with multiple "homes"? For those where migration is provisional and contingent? What is the role of diasporic consciousness in forging bonds in immigrant or refugee communities? How do diasporic communities functionin relation to the "homeland" and the new land? What attitudes, policies, and politics characterize the way in which diasporic communities are treated? How do power and privilege factor into the meanings of diaspora and diasporic identity?

• SOURCE: http://btcs.wisc.edu/diasporas.htm

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Diaspora

Refugees

Exiles

Migrants

Jews

African descent

Rich & Poor in Diaspora

Border & Transcultural Studies Research Circle (BTCS) University of Wisconsin-Madison

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Institute for Postcolonial & Transcultural Studies University of Bremen

• “Summer Institute ‘Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands’

• From May 15. to 26. 2015, a Summer Institute on ‘Borders, Borderthinking, Borderlands’ will be held at the University of Bremen. The Summer Institute will propose a critical epistemology of borders, focusing on border making, border contestation and new border imaginations. It will propose a re-evaluation of the state of humanities in light of the challenge anti-colonial struggles and decolonization processes have and still are posing to ‘borders’. Organized in cooperation between the Bremen Black Knowledges Research Group, the Bremen Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University (Center for Global Studies and the Humanities), this will be the first session in a series of yearly Summer Institutes.”

• SOURCE: http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/inputs/

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Transcultural Studies: A Series in Interdisciplinary Research

• “In the words of the Russian critic Mikhail Epstein, to adopt a transcultural orientation as a mode of inquiry means to be “located beyond any particular mode of existence”, or “finding one’s place on the border of existing cultures. This realm beyond all cultures is located inside of transculture and belongs to the state of not-belonging…”

• The consequence of a critic adopting a position on the outside of whatever is conceived as the inside of his or her social and cultural domain requires is to escape “culture-centrism” or the totalizing effects of ideology. A transcultural critic, like Epstein, or a transcultural philosopher like Merab Mamardashvili, whose concept of nothingness is the ground of Epstein’s anti-position, eschews national and cultural identity, identity politics and multiculturalism.

• The editorial board of Transcultural Studies: A Series in Interdisciplinary Research share the view that to embrace this kind of freedom from ideologically oriented or discipline-bound directions in scholarship requires a conscious effort that is not unlike the job of Socrates: the effort of ridding oneself of prejudices, idols and icons of scholarly fashion. In this spirit of freedom, the editorial board welcomes innovative methodologies on a wide range of emerging issues in the humanities.

• Contributions are invited on interdisciplinary topics that go beyond the disciplinary and offer self-reflexive critiques of their own methodologies.”

• SOURCE: http://www.schlacks.com/transcultures.html

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Mikhail Epstein

No to Identity Politics

No to Multi-

culturalism

No to National

& Cultural Identity

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Not Just One Way of Doing

Transcultural StudiesREY TY

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But Many Ways of Doing

Transcultural StudiesREY TY

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Different Ways of Doing

Transcultural StudiesREY TY

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