Transcultural Literary Studies: Politics, Theory, and Literary Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

The last few decades have seen a significant increase in transcultural studies, ranging from psychology and nursing to cultural anthropology, political philosophy, and literary studies. This Special Issue of Humanities invites authors to discuss principal disciplinary or cross-disciplinary tenets of transculturalism and/or offer readings that showcase literature’s potential of engaging many of the overlapping and, at times, contradictory aspects of transcultural paradigms.

Highlighting transcultural interpretations (beyond multi- or cross-cultural readings and in critical tension with conceptualizations of national or sub-national cultures) is, by no small measure, a political decision that is often prompted and guided by a search for pre-cultural and cultural commonalities as a basis for the design of universal human rights, international law, transnational administrative structures, and global education. At the same time, transcultural approaches are, prima fasciae, deeply rooted in the ethos and tradition of the natural sciences, digital sciences, numerous social sciences, and some areas within the humanities (e.g., philosophy). For most disciplines in the humanities an engaged discussion about the political and scholarly implications (potentials and dangers) of transcultural studies seems highly desirable. Some have even suggested that the humanities are in need of strategies that can move its discourse onto a different plane, for instance, a shift from an emphasis on conceptions of collective identities to conceptual models of transcultural individuals (e.g., a re-centering of the individual self, as Wolfgang Welsch and others have proposed).

Discussing potential paths towards a theory of transcultural literary interpretation should be informed by the disciplinary history of literary studies, as well as developments in pertinent fields, such as evolutionary anthropology and cognitive science (for instance, new approaches to concepts of empathy, perception, language, reason, religious studies, etc.), to name just two obvious candidates. At the same time, it is crucial to assemble a set of model readings of significant literary texts that can demonstrate the exploratory potential of literary studies for a general emphasis on transcultural scholarship. In all of this, it is of great importance that we avoid falling victim to the trappings of some of our most worshiped binary pairs such as particularism and universalism, diversity and homogenization, nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Prof. Dr. Bernd Fischer
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

References:
Bond, Lucy and Jessica Rapson, ed. The Transcultural Turn Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders (2014).
Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice (Dublin Institute of Technology; since 2004).
Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research (Lancester University; since 2014).
Cuccioletta, Donald. “Multiculturalism or Transculturalism: Towards a Cosmopolitan Citizenship” (2002).
Dagnino, Arianna, “Global Mobility, Transcultural Literature, and Multiple Modes of Modernity” (2013).
Dagnino, Arianna. Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility (2015).
Davis, Geoffrey V. and Peter H. Marsden, ed. Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Human Rights in a ‘Post’-Colonial World (2004).
Erll, Astrid. “Migration and Transcultural Memory: Literature, Film, and Plurimedia Constellations” (DFG project, since 2014).
Grosu, Lucia-Mihaela. “Multiculturalism of Transculturalism? Views on Colutural Diversity (2012).
Hepp, Andreas. “Transculturality as a Perspective: Researching Media Cultures Comparatively” (2009).
Lindberg-Wada, Gunilla, ed. Studying Transcultural Literary History (2006).
MacDougall, David. Transcultural Cinema (1998).
Meinhof, Ulrike Hanna and Anna Triandafyllidou, ed. Transcultural Europe Cultural Policy in a Changing Europe (2006).
Moslund, Sten Pultz. Migration Literature and Hybridity. The Different Speeds of Transcultural Change (2010).
Nordin, Irene et al. Transcultural Identities in Contemporary Literature (2013).
Petterson, Anders et al. Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective (4 volumes; 2004).
Pollock, David and Ruth Van Reken. Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (2009).
In Search for Transcultural Memory in Europe (ISTME; Research Center).
Slimbach, Richard. “The Transcultural Journey” (2005).
Takkula, Hannu, Jukka Kangaslahti and Joseph Banks. “Teaching transcultural competence: From language learning to experiential education” (2008).
Waldmann, Anne and Laura Wright, ed. Cross Worlds: Transcultural Poetics. An Anthology (2014).
Welsch, Wolfgang. “Transculturality – the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today” (1996).

• theories and philosophies of transculturalism
• defining the transcultural
• transcultural politics
• the history of transcultural literature
• transcultural aesthetics
• transcultural memory
• education and transcultural literary interpretation
• world literature and the transcultural self
• reading outside of the safe haven of culturalism