There is an ongoing debate about racism to be understood either as a problem on the level of culture or, in the wake of the Anthropocene, as only one effect of a more generally abusive behaviour that instrumentalises, exploits and colonises human and non-human nature alike. Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982) addresses this complex question. Specifically, the film extends the critical discussion of racism as it shows ideology being ‘implanted’ into a white shepherd dog that is trained to kill black people. This turns the shepherd into a symbol and instrument of racism. Yet the dog also has its real existence and real history of abuse. Fleshing out a critique of racism with a nonhuman animal’s relational experience of suffering, the film arrives at a complex understanding of justice, not to relativise racism, but to dramatise the extent of its impact. This essay reconstructs Fuller’s critical approach by reading the film from two perspectives: a human-centred one (foregrounding racism in an ordinary sense) and one primarily concerned with the nonhuman as informed by Donna Haraway’s writings on dog training and interspecies companionship. It will be made clear that, in Fuller’s view, racism also implies a crime against nature.
Nonhuman aesthetics is often pursued either by extending human aesthetic parameters to more-than-human domains or by dissolving the aesthetic into generalized relationality. This article proposes an account that keeps “aesthetic” discriminable without grounding it in taste, judgment, or human legibility. It first reframes the aesthetic register as aesthesis: an impersonal field in which encounters become articulate through differential responsiveness. It then distinguishes stabilized and adaptive operativity as modes of causal conduct: whether registered differences are absorbed into an established conduit or modify how the encounter continues. Openness and closure are introduced as criteria of the encounter’s formal-consequential horizon: whether consequences remain confined to an available repertoire or reconfigure what can follow. Nonhuman aesthetic performance occurs independently of human involvement, and arises when adaptive mode and open criterion coincide. This conjunction allows the same discrete encounter to shift between aesthetic and non-aesthetic performances without being classified once and for all. Finally, the article elaborates the implications of nonhuman aesthetics for cultural studies. It argues for a posthumanist cultural studies oriented not toward human access to nonhuman events, but toward the larger situated objects in which occurrence and access, human and nonhuman registrations, and aesthetic and non-aesthetic performances are internally articulated.
This paper investigates how narrative innovation intersects with identity formation in Fatima Qandil’s (2025, Empty cages: a novel. American University in Cairo Press) Empty Cages and Natasha Brown’s (2021, Assembly. Hamish Hamilton, London) Assembly, two texts that emerged within different, yet parallel, literary traditions: Arabic and British. The overall purpose of the study is to analyze the ways in which the authors use tools of experimentation such as fragmented narration, memoir-like reflection, and intentional discontinuities to disrupt traditional embodied images of selfhood, memory, and trauma. Based on a theoretical framework that unites narratology and intersectionality, the paper engages in a comparative reading approach that places Empty Cages in the lineage of Arabic feminist and postcolonial literature and interprets Assembly as a scathing indictment of race, class, and institutional bias in modern English literature. Putting these works in dialogue, the study shows how new forms of narrative not only document the disjuncture of identity but also map new practices of belonging to voices at the margins. Finally, the paper contends that the cross-cultural approach of Qandil and Brown contributes to the development of the multicultural literary studies field, reconceptualizing the critical discourse on narrative and identity both in the context of socio-historical and transnational worlds.
It is an axiom that almost every literary sphere bears evidence of the ubiquity of Saudi women writers venturing into all areas and segments of modern life. There is an increasing number of Saudi women writers, Badriah Albeshr and Atheer Al-Nashmi being vocal examples, who no longer fear depicting the pursuit of love, intimacy, and failed marriages. They show no reluctance in attempting to intersect these themes with motherhood. However, the literary construction of marriage and motherhood has been less surveilled by critics. Using a feminist framework, this research examines how Saudi women writers portray marriage and motherhood through select examples: Albeshr’s Hend and the Soldiers and Al-Nashmi’s The Woman Who Lost. Both Hend and the Soldiers and The Woman Who Lost embody templates that relegate women to traditional roles assigned to them as per the patriarchal need. Through the representations of their characters, the two novels reveal the power of men and confinement of women within their male-dominated culture.
Proverbs are often regarded as condensed expressions of cultural knowledge and values. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory as based on Main Meaning Focus (Kovecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: a practical introduction. Oxford University Press), this study investigates conceptual metaphors in a corpus of 100 Korean proverbs. The study argues that these Korean proverbs are structured by a relatively small set of recurrent source domains – such as animals, food, body, artefacts and the natural environment – through which abstract target domains including social relations, hierarchy, diligence, prudence and fate are conceptualised. For each source domain, the specific aspect highlighted in Korean (its main meaning focus) is identified. Comparison with earlier work on Chinese, Hakka, Japanese, Romanian and Malay proverbs indicates that Korean proverbs share many higher-order conceptual metaphors with other traditions, but elaborate them in ways shaped by Confucian relational ethics and collectivist norms. The study illustrates how main meaning focus refines proverb analysis beyond simple source–target mappings and proposes a set of organising metaphors for Korean proverbial cognition, with implications for research on culture and for Korean language/culture pedagogy.
In the face of increasing alarm at the rapid rate of endangerment of the many Indigenous languages of Africa, with over 2,000 languages facing extinction, this study argues for a critical role for oral performance genres not only as cultural expressions but also as critical infrastructure for revitalising Indigenous languages of Africa. Through comparative case studies of isiXhosa in South Africa, Maa spoken by the Maasai of Tanzania, and Yorùbá within the broader Yorùbá cultural sphere of Southwestern Nigeria and the Benin-Togo strip, the study argues for the efficacy of performance-based revitalisation of Indigenous languages of Africa to be institutionally embedded, economically viable, and pedagogically integrated for it to be effective. Through qualitative methods and informed by the theoretical frameworks of Cultural Sustainability and Critical Language Planning, the study reveals how isicathamiya, adumu, and oríkì function as living pedagogies of linguistic and cultural capital, but also how uneven outcomes reveal the critical role of policy support and integration with the educational system in South Africa and Nigeria, and the challenges facing Maa revitalisation in Tanzania.
International student mobility has become an increasingly important dimension of higher education internationalization, particularly for emerging destination countries such as Turkey. This study investigates the key factors influencing international university students’ decisions to choose Turkey as a study destination and examines how these motivations vary according to students’ regions of origin. Data were collected using the 3-Key Rationalization Survey for Incoming International Students, a 23-item instrument designed to assess behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, and perceived behavioral control based on the Theory of Planned Behavior. The sample of the study consisted of 3,554 international students enrolled at 30 universities across Turkey. The findings reveal that the primary reasons for preferring Turkey include the opportunity to study abroad, perceived cultural proximity, and favorable comparisons between Turkey’s higher education system and that of students’ home countries. Notably, the results indicate notable regional differences in decision-making patterns. Students from conflict-affected regions, Turkic states, and Eastern Europe tended to base their choices more strongly on normative beliefs and perceived social expectations. In contrast, students from African and Asian countries were more influenced by personal attitudes and perceived educational benefits. These findings highlight the significant role of cultural, social, and contextual factors in shaping international students’ mobility decisions, providing valuable insights for higher education policy and international recruitment strategies in Turkey.
Gender equality education has been implemented worldwide. Nevertheless, its implementation in teacher education has often been perfunctory and symbolic. This study conceptualized gender equality not as a universal principle but as a practice continually translated in local cultural settings. Drawing on a cultural studies perspective and the lens of governmentality, this case study analyzed 27 preservice teachers’ gender equality lesson plans and written teacher feedback as empirical data. It investigated how gender equality is concretized through the tension between policy borrowing and local moral order, focusing on the “desexualized” professional culture shaped by Confucian values in Taiwan’s early childhood education sector. The findings reveal that preservice teachers relied on symbolic gender role reversals and spatialized strategies (e.g., safe and private spaces) to mitigate cultural anxiety associated with gender and the body, reducing gender equality to lip service. By contrast, teacher feedback induced cognitive ruptures that unsettled cognitive frameworks. This study argues that gender equality in teacher education is concretized through cultural translation and governmentality, reshaping professional subjectivity.
This study focuses on the media representations of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in China Daily. By combining critical discourse analysis and the theoretical concept of friendship in international relations, it aims to provide insights into the strategic representations of China’s English-language coverage of the conflict. Meanwhile, it seeks to contribute a critical analysis to the ideological influence of national friendship on the news discourses of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The study identifies four main themes surrounding Russia, Ukraine, America and China, namely, “Russia masters the situation”, “Ukraine fights against aggression”, “the United States-led West is a troublemaker”, and “China is a peacemaker”. Under the main thematic frames, it analyses their representative discourses by drawing on the discourse-historical approach and applies the friendship concept to critically analyse the power and ideologies that are embedded in the news representations. It argues that the friendships between China and the involved major states impact on China’s news discursive representations of the conflict, which offers a new analytical dimension that friendship is a power element that can be used to analyse news discourse and also a key factor in China’s geopolitical consideration.
Masculine authority in literary narratives often appears stable and self-evident, yet moments of its breakdown reveal the conditions under which legitimacy is granted or withheld. This article examines masculine failure in Hamlet and The Great Gatsby by asking how historically distinct regimes of legitimacy shape the intelligibility of masculine performance. Focusing on honor in the Renaissance and capital in modern capitalism, the analysis shows that masculine failure takes different forms across these contexts. In Hamlet, ethical hesitation and temporal delay disrupt an honor-based expectation of decisive action, such that reflective masculinity becomes socially unintelligible. In The Great Gatsby, visible striving and performative excess expose the limits of capital as a source of masculine legitimacy, particularly in the absence of inherited status. Read comparatively, the two texts suggest that masculine failure is not a singular condition, but a historically variable outcome shaped by institutional norms and regimes of recognition. Rather than an achieved identity, masculinity emerges here as a precarious status that depends on social authorization and remains vulnerable to withdrawal.
Horror fiction often reflects social fears and hidden problems in society. This article presents a sociocultural reading of Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). It argues that the novel should not be viewed as a supernatural horror story but also as a cultural text about institutional harm. The study uses several theoretical ideas, including cultural violence theory, moral panic theory, Foucauldian disciplinary power, institutional betrayal theory and the sociology of deviance. Through qualitative thematic analysis and close reading of the novel, the article examines three main institutions: the school, the religious family and the peer group. These institutions work together to isolate and marginalize Carrie White, slowly denying her social agency and sense of belonging. While many earlier studies focus on feminist or psychoanalytic interpretations, this article highlights the sociological meaning of the narrative. It interprets Carrie’s telekinetic power as a form of symbolic statement of suppressed social agency which develops after long periods of humiliation and institutional neglect. The article suggests the idea of “supernatural retaliation as cultural response” and that horror fiction can expose deeper social issues and institutional failures.
This article examines how gender shapes readers’ perceptions of literary authorship when biographical information is withheld. Using an explanatory mixed-methods design, it investigates how male and female university students infer an author’s gender from short prose excerpts and which cues guide these inferences. Data come from 83 undergraduates (62 women, 21 men) at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, who completed a questionnaire containing seven anonymised excerpts from Kazakh and World prose fiction by three female and four male authors. For each excerpt, participants indicated whether they believed the author to be male or female and provided open-ended justifications. Quantitative analysis (error rates and chi-square tests) shows that both female and male readers identified male authors more accurately than female authors. Although female readers displayed a modest advantage, misclassification of female-authored texts remained frequent in both groups, indicating a shared tendency to assume male authorship. Qualitative thematic analysis of the justifications reveals reliance on strongly gendered markers and stereotypes: male authors were associated with strength, rationality, history and power, whereas female authors were linked to emotionality, vulnerability and relational or domestic roles. The study provides empirical evidence on the gendered reception of literary texts.
Re-examining late Ottoman Damascene shadow theatre (khayal al-zill), this article treats the script, the puppet, and the performance space as a single system of meaning-making. It proposes an integrated documentation method that correlates textual, material, and spatial evidence to reconstruct shadow theatre as lived urban practice. This addresses the field's long-standing fragmentation, which isolates manuscripts from surviving objects and from performance venues. Focusing on Fasl al-khashabat (The Wooden Pillars Play), the study sets late Ottoman Arabic playtexts alongside leather puppets preserved at the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions in al-'Azm Palace to show how vernacular diction, visual caricature, and gesture articulated critiques of bureaucratic authority and class hierarchy in the convivial coffeehouse. Reading word and image together clarifies how humour functioned as social commentary and political mediation. The article concludes by outlining how this method can inform museum practice and heritage curation. In practical terms, it proposes an interactive museum coupled with a linked digital research archive (virtual museum) that pairs object dossiers with time-stamped script excerpts, sonic cues, and short staged clips keyed at the level of individual puppets. This hybrid model extends scholarly reproducibility and public access, offering a transferable protocol for activating intangible heritage and sustaining performance as a living archive.
This study examines congratulatory expressions of Facebook users’ comments on Ramadan in Jordan. The study has gathered a total of 832 congratulatory comments in 8 Facebook posts and diagnoses the data theoretically adopting Mey’s theory. By analyzing the data qualitatively and quantitatively, the study categorizes the data based on congratulatory strategies and pragmatic functions utilized in situational contexts. The findings show that congratulating formula strategies form the dominant pragmatically-governed pattern within the dataset amounting to 53.8 % out of all strategies. Expressions of good wishes and expressions of happiness follow with 14 % and 10.2 % respectively. While expressions of compliments, non-verbal language, religious nuances, Ramadan-related welcoming explicits, and jokes constitute the least frequent strategies. The results, overall, reveal that Facebook Jordanian users dominantly depend on contextualized cultural formations and religiously-shared expressions, mirroring the major influence of collective knowledge culturally and religiously following Mey’s theory of pragmatic acts. These findings pinpoint the mode of pre-dominance of traditional discourse of congratulating within Arabic digital communication, combined with growing hybrid forms between customarily cultural expressions and colloquial colloquial phrases and nuances. This paper contributes to the pragmatics of digital Arabic discourse as well as revealing the intricate between language, culture, religion, and values.
Central to cultural expression, social values, and mainstream ideologies, proverbs encapsulate the collective wisdom of their communities across different themes including gender. In patriarchal societies, the proverbial repertoire is instrumental in maintaining and legitimizing gender hierarchies and normalizing unequal power relations. This study examines the representation of women in Egyptian proverbs through the lens of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), aiming to uncover how gendered ideologies are embedded in proverbial discourse and how language contributes to the maintenance of patriarchal norms. Data were collected from 100 Egyptian participants who identified the 25 most familiar proverbs describing women, which were then qualitatively analyzed using FCDA. The findings reveal that 80 % of the examined proverbs depict women negatively - as weak, dependent, or irrational - while the few positive portrayals remain confined to traditional familial roles that women play as wives, mothers and daughters. The patterns identified illustrate how proverbial discourse sustains gender inequality. The study concludes that Egyptian proverbs not only mirror but also perpetuate patriarchal ideologies. Finally, it recommends conducting comparative studies to explore gender representations across regional and generational contexts.
In July 2023, two films, Barbie and Oppenheimer, were released on the same day, creating such a buzz among viewers that the internet dubbed it the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon. The two films present a complex entanglement, having opposite spins, much like entangled quantum particles, when observed together (depending on how one or both films are viewed), reveal critical insights regarding the possible realities of our current world. While their entanglement as Barbenheimer may have been a marketing device resulting from internet fandom, their grand reception reveals deeper truths about the modern world than anticipated. Both films portray protagonists who realize the "tragic incommensurability" of humans and humanity. Moral imagination plays a vital role in these films allowing the audience to transcend their perspectives and grasp the range of others' experiences. As such, this article examines these two films through the lens of the philosophy of quantum physics, particularly concerning the concept of quantum entanglement. This article attempts to identify micro into macro, the effects of new discoveries in the field of science and how they influence our perception of reality. A major purpose of this article is to explore whether such "entangled" readings can be applied to cultural texts, such as these films, and whether the observation of one may influence how we view the other. In other words, by bringing the philosophy of science to the study of popular culture, the article seeks to investigate this phenomenon of quantum nature in popular culture.
As global society confronts compounding crises, environmental collapse, rising authoritarianism, trade wars, and border conflicts, the concept of hope has become increasingly fragile and contested. Caribbean masquerade, particularly as it intersects with the entertainment industry, new-media landscapes, popular culture, and emergent technologies, can be understood as activating and sustaining hope. Situating masquerade within the framework of heritage and contemporary aesthetic praxis, this paper examines how Caribbean masquerade traditions and innovations resist nihilism by imagining and embodying alternative futures. Masquerade is one of the most important art forms in the Caribbean and has historically contributed to optimism and cultural confidence, fueling national developmental projects throughout the region. Presently, as these countries face uncertain futures associated with environmental and economic vulnerability, social change, and cultural identity crisis, masquerade continues to play a pivotal role in engendering hope.
This article explores how the black British film and video collective Sankofa addresses postcolonial identity in their 1992 work In-Between. The film follows filmmaker Robert Crusz as he negotiates competing cultural expectations, feelings of nostalgia for Britain, what I term Britishtalgia, and a fragmented sense of self. Using ideas from postcolonial and cultural studies scholars such as Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, and Svetlana Boym, the article shows how cinema can express hybrid, dynamic identities. By combining archival and fictional footage, Crusz creates a space for creative self-expression, blending his Eastern and Western heritage while questioning dominant cultural narratives. The study highlights the film’s cinematic techniques in exploring transcultural memory, experiences of displacement, and personal journeys of belonging. In-Between demonstrates the potential of film to reclaim marginalised voices and offers insights into diasporic subjectivity, contributing to discussions in cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and minority cinemas.
Code-switching plays a central role in bilingual humour, generating comedic effects through language alternation. Anglo-French bilingual humour remains an under-researched field compared to other language pairs that have gained worldwide recognition. This research investigates how code-switching functions differ across three genres of Anglo-French bilingual humour: a comedy film, a stand-up performance, and a collection of bilingual jokes. A two-phase analytical approach was employed to explore how genre-specific conventions shape the use and purpose of code-switching. Each instance of code-switching was first assigned a single primary communicative function. Then, the frequency and distribution of these functions across the three genres were determined. The findings showed that code-switching in the comedy film appeared most frequently for expressive purposes along with referential and directive uses. The stand-up performance displayed a more balanced distribution with a notably high percentage of metalinguistic and phatic functions compared to the film. In contrast, the jokes overwhelmingly featured the poetic function of code-switching. These results demonstrate that communicative functions of code-switching are shaped by genre-specific goals and constraints. The study argues that functional models of code-switching, while useful for categorisation, should be extended to include genre as a predictive and explanatory component.
