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Transcultural Studies: A Series in Interdisciplinary Research

Published by Charles Schlacks Jr., Idyllwild , CA

Introducing TransCultures

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 this state of not-belonging…” 1

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 forfeiture of “culture-centrism” and a conscious resistance to 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.

Such 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. The editorial board of Transcultural Studies: A Series in Interdisciplinary Research , sharing this view, welcomes contributions on a wide range of emerging issues in the humanities and on interdisciplinary topics that go beyond the disciplinary while offering self-reflexive critiques of their own methodologies.

Each issue will focus on a specific topic or area and will have a guest editor. The core editorial board will plan and advertise topics for forthcoming issues and advise on the refereeing process.

The inaugural issue (2005) includes papers presented at the Border Crossings: Popular, Mass and Global Culture Conference , organized by the School of Languages , Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University , 2-3 October 2003.

Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover
Evert van der Zweerde
For the Editorial Board

1. Mikhail N Epstein, After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture. Trans. With an Introduction by Anesa Miller-Pogacar.(Amherts: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), pg. 298.

Editorial Board

Candidates:

Inaugural Issue

TRANSCULTURAL STUDIES : A SERIES IN INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Volume 1 (2005)

SPECIAL ISSUE
BORDER CROSSINGS: Popular, Mass and Global Culture

Editors:
Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover
Andrew Padgett
Julia Vassilieva

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The transcultural learning experience

Hiroko Hashimoto
Internationalisation of universities: The impact of the global expansionof English on Japanese universities

Kara Gilbert
Argumentation in Students' Academic Discourse

Simone McQuillen
A READING-TO-WRITE Perspective of Japanese and Australian Students' Source Text Integration in Academic Discourse

Zosia Golebiowski
Globalisation of academic communities and the style of research reporting: the case of a sociology

Christopher Burgess
The Reconstruction of Identity and Temporary Native Language ‘Loss': The Case of Korean International Migrants in Japan

Konrad Guensch
Cosmopolitanism and its Relationship to Multilingualism as a FormTransculture

Transculture, modernization and globalisation

David Roberts
From Modernization to Multiple Modernities

Annette van den Bosch
Art in Malaysia and Singapore: Gateway to China and Marketplace of Ideas

Atsuko Handa
Housewife, New Family and the Home in Japanese Modern Society

Rebecca-Anne C Do Rozario
It's all Greek to Disney: Intercultural Issues in a Model Example of Global Homogenisation

Transculture and interpretation

Rob Baum
Death to the Female Cyborg: Feminism and Motherhood in
Long Kiss Goodnight

Leonard Anthony Polakiewicz
Dialogicity Extended: Lermontov's
Taman ' and Chekhov's Thieves

Nikolai Gladanac
Poesis and the Interrogation of History in Cormac McCarthy's
Blood Meridian

Research