Bridging Transcultural Divides

"The impressive and stimulating essays in Bridging Transcultural Divides deal with the cultural and educational issues in the Australian context. (...) The books central message is that education for Asian students in Australia, and more broadly in the West, can no longer been seen as a one-way transfer of knowledge, but must be understood as a process of reciprocal learning in which both teachers and students are changed by the experience." - Prof. Tim Wright, University of Sheffield.

This book is a distinctive collection on transcultural encounters in knowledge production and consumption, which are situated at the heart of pursuit for cognitive justice. It uniquely represents transcultural dialogues between academics of Australia, China and Malaysia, located on the borders of different knowledge systems. The uniqueness of this volume lies in the convergence of transcultural perspectives, which bring together diverse disciplines as cultural studies, education, media, translation theory and practice, arts, musicology, political science and literature. Each chapter explores the possibility of decolonising the knowledge production space as well as research methodologies. The chapters engage with ‘Chinese’ and ‘western’ thought on transcultural subjects and collectively articulate a new politics of difference, de-centring the dominant epistemologies and research paradigms in the global academia. Refracted through transcultural theories and practices, adapted to diverse traditions, histories and regional affiliations, and directed toward an international transcultural audience, the volume demonstrates expansive possibilities in knowledge production and contributes to the understanding of and between research scholarship which deals with collective societal and cultural challenges within the globalised world we live in. It would be of interest to researchers engaged with current critical debates in general and global scholars in transcultural and intercultural studies in specific.

This book is a unique and original contribution to the knowledge of transcultural engagement between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’; notably between China and Australia.The collection explores how the global system universally interrelates East and West, showing how this interrelatedness offers the promise of progress but can evoke the counteracting trend of tribal nationalism. The book addresses the connectedness of human progress by exploring how globalization creates new dynamic interfaces between East and West and how rather than clashes of culture there are growing forms of reciprocity between civilizations and a shared awareness of how humanity is connected through knowledge and international mobility.

Written with passion, the stories told in this book are those of the search, loss and recreation of identities. From the Fiji-born women living in Canada looking for themselves to the Japanese of Korean origin having lost touch with their original culture, from the Catalonian demand for recognition to the quest for a common European heritage, we can read of the endless need of peoples to find their rightful place in our multicultural societies.

This book explores the ways in which transcultural pedagogies can support learning and literacies in critical, creative and socially just ways, highlighting research initiatives from across the globe. Each chapter provides a different and innovative perspective with respect to reimagining language and literacy pedagogies in conjunction with students’ diverse literacies and resources. Presenting a collection of classroom and community-based research, the book addresses the intersections of plurilingualism, identity and transcultural awareness in various contexts, including schools, universities, as well as local and Indigenous communities. These settings have been deliberately chosen to profile the range of research in the field, showcasing transcultural, plurilingual, translanguaging and community-engaged pedagogies, among others.

The Bachelor of Arts (BA) was the first recognised degree at the University of Adelaide. Although informal classes for some subjects were held at the University between 1873 and 1875, the first official University lecture was a Latin lecture at 10 am on Monday 28 March 1876. This was followed by lectures in Greek, English and Mental Philosophy. By 1878, the first BA student, Thomas Ainslie Caterer, completed his studies for the BA degree and in 1879 became the first graduate of the University of Adelaide. Even though the BA was the first degree it was not until eight years later in 1887 that the Faculty of Arts was inaugurated (after the Faculty of Law in 1884, a Board of Studies in Music in 1885 and the Faculty of Medicine in 1885). Following the creation of a separate science degree in 1882 many scientific subjects were removed from the BA. For the next five years the subjects were Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Logic, English, History, and Comparative Philology. Later other subjects such as French, German and Political Economy were added toward the end of the nineteenth century. In 1897 the Elder Conservatorium of Music was created as the first music school of its type in Australia, although at that time it was not part of the Faculty of Arts. In the first 50 years of the Universitys existence, less than ten BA students graduated each year. At the start of the 21st century this figure had climbed to over 300 BA graduates per year but what is interesting is that by 2010 the number of BA graduates was equalled by the number of graduates from separate named degrees within the Faculty plus 70 Music graduates. In addition, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were over 60 coursework postgraduates plus more than 40 research postgraduates graduating each year.

This volume revisits the notions of Orientalism, Occidentalism and, to a certain extent, Reverse Orientalism/Occidentalism in the 21st century, adopting post-modern, constructionist and potentially non-essentialising approaches. The representations of the ‘cultural Other’ in education, literature and the arts are examined by scholars working in Australia, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the USA. Vinyl compilations, TV series, novels, institutional discourses and surveys, amongst others, are examined so as to better understand how people construct their identity in relation to an imagined and idealised Other. This book will appeal to all researchers and students interested in cultural identity and stereotypes of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’, in particular in the fields of academic mobility, cultural studies, intercultural education, postcolonial literature and media studies.