Like culture itself, the field of intercultural studies is a product of historical events and encounters. The values, norms, beliefs, and experiences of previous generations shape our current perspectives and procedures in this field. Inversely, our intercultural positionality also leads to different interpretations of history. We know that the same events will belong to different stories and assume a variable significance in more than one narrative (Louis Mink). Thus, we should place grea...

Like culture itself, the field of intercultural studies is a product of historical events and encounters. The values, norms, beliefs, and experiences of previous generations shape our current perspectives and procedures in this field. Inversely, our intercultural positionality also leads to different interpretations of history. We know that the same events will belong to different stories and assume a variable significance in more than one narrative (Louis Mink). Thus, we should place grea...

In the world’s so-called honor and face cultures, certain values and codes related to the protection of a family’s stainless reputation are deep-rooted. When they are violated by what is perceived as an immoral action, and the respective transgression becomes known, the honor not only of the deviant, but also of the in-group itself is damaged. This leads to stigmatization followed by collective rejection. Consequently, the stigma needs to be removed, usually by a publicly recognizable puni...

Honor-related values are a source of gendered inequality and of violence. In so-called honor cultures, traditionally located in parts of the Middle East, Mediterranean regions, North Africa, and South America, honor translates into women’s roles as dictated by family ideology. There is a direct link between male reputation and the female body. In these matters, East Asian face cultures are similar to but also different from honor cultures. For the first time, this book studies literary tog...

Gu's original perspective on legal history challenges established theories of law based on political science, sociology, and philosophy. She argues that language at a specific time and place determines how the law works in each culture. As each language accumulates too many meanings and connotations, the law becomes inflated by rulings, interpretations, and codified cases that overlap and contradict one another.

“These essays, deftly blending the political and the personal, offer fresh, galvanizing, and passionate perspectives on literary translation.”—Jhumpa LahiriA manifesto in 22 essays, Violent Phenomena breaks stale rules about who can and should translate, envisioning a future more reflective of the beautiful polyphony of literature in all languages.?What would it take to unlearn centuries of colonial influence over the books we read...

Tazzunt presents a group of Berbers (Imazighen), the Ait Arbaa, who live in the Tessawt Valley of the High Atlas of Morocco, eking out a meager existence from the eroded soil of their rugged environment, by harvesting turnips, millet and maize, and one cash crop of walnuts. They depend also on a simple form of summer pasture. Tazzunt means limit: and it refers to an annual ritual which gathers around the shrine of a local Saint, Sidi Asdal, several villages of the Valley for its celebratio...

Ecocriticism has matured beyond nature writing, beyond writing about nature. The essays in this volume look at the broader cultural, historical, sociological, and psychological implications of ecology in written, visual, and sound culture. In keeping with our sense of a global community, these essays are representative of international scholarship on ecology and the environment, and display the range of insight of which this criticism is capable. Focusing on popular culture, this volume is...

New pedagogy for studying literature in translationIn the last several decades, literary works from around the world have made their way onto the reading lists of American university and college courses in an increasingly wide variety of disciplines. This is a cause for rejoicing. Through works in translation, students in our mostly monolingual society are at last becoming acquainted with the multilingual and multicultural world in which they will live and work. Ma...

This collection of essays begins with the premise that violence, in its relationship to order, is a central element of history. Taking a broad definition of violence, including structural and symbolic violence, the contributions move beyond the problematic of civilization’s mitigating or foundational role, instead seeing violence as inherently social, and, perhaps, socially inherent (if variable). The question then becomes what forms of harm are authorized or banned in which social orders ...

Arabic Literature for the Classroom argues for a more visible presence of Arabic within the humanities and social sciences, stressing the need to make Arabic literature available as a world literature, without damaging its own distinctive characteristics.The nineteen chapters which make up this book broach theoretical and methodical cultural concerns in teaching literatures from non-American cultures, along with issues of cross-cultural communication, cultural competency a...

Arab cultural discourse has been slow to respond to changing sexual behaviour. The contributors to this collection pick up the slack, ranging across such disciplines as literature, history, sociology and psychology. Is Damascus the 'chastity capital' of the Middle East, where perceptions of wealth and class fuel female rivalries? How do gay men cruise in Beirut? How do young women in Tunis cope with both social pressures to become thin and family pressures to gain weight? What do Lebanese ...