Preface: Scholarly Writing as a Spiritual and Reflexive Practice

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This article reflects on the bi -directional, reflexive work of scholarship and spirituality. It begins with the author’s positionality as a Christian language educator who has researched spiritually in her field of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL). A brief introduction of seminal works in faith and scholarship is provided, followed by a discussion of how scholarship within one faith tradition might be applied to others. The concept of scholars as spiritual beings is raised with a reflection on the limits of categorizing acts as either sacred or secular, and how this polarity hinders deeper, more meaningful ways to engage in scholarship when even the mundane is seen as spiritual and so called ‘spiritual’ acts are reconsidered as potentially empty ritual. Five trajectories of spiritual scholarship are described with examples for each trajectory from the author’s work: 1. Vertical: enlarging our understanding of God; 2. Outward: revealing an understanding of nature and the universe; 3. Horizontal: improving our spiritual service to others; 4. Inward: deepening our spiritual identity; 5. Multidimensional: providing a spiritual understanding through difficult life events and finding meaning and interconnectedness to God, self &amp; others. Reflection on the legitimacy of scholarship and spirituality concludes the article.
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Scholars as Spiritual Beings: Five Trajectories of Scholarship and Spirituality

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Most toponomastics research has ignored the importance of indigenous places as sites for identity and other cultural and social significance. Using Cape Coast as a historical site of the transatlantic slave trade, this study explores the origin, meanings and relevance of indigenous place names in the suburbs of Cape Coast, Ghana. Through an interdisciplinary approach that synergizes an interview with a chief, who is a prosopographer, historical documents, and literary sources, this study traces the city’s evolution from its ancestral hunting origins. The findings revealed that Cape Coast’s identity is encapsulated in the indigenous names, which point out the complex dynamics of culture, geography, identity and power. The names reference landmarks, events, environment and communities, transforming the city itself into a living archive with historical relevance. The literary interpretations uncovered metaphorical meanings encoded in some toponyms. Tracing connections across people, events, geography and time, these names reveal an interconnection often obscured by colonial ruptures. Based on these findings, there is a need to preserve the indigenous place names to foster intergenerational connections to the city’s storied landscape. The study contributes to Critical Toponymy theory and empirical insights into using indigenous toponyms to decolonize urban heritage.
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Indigenous Place Names: A Literary Toponomastics Study of Suburb Names in Cape Coast

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Sociology professor Phoebe Godfrey and her former student Juan Pablo Yepes Tobón, engage in boundary -crossing explorations of the relationship between the academy and spirituality — recognizing dialogue as intimate and animate, reflecting the character of spirituality. The purpose of education is posed as the cultivation of the students’ inner life. This entails nurturing intrinsic curiosity; encouraging cross -disciplinary, spiritual/ontological consideration; holding space for students to explore their “authentic Self”; and thusly helping the students to discover their “gifts”, which arise innately from this spiritual cultivation and flourishing.
This stands in stark opposition to the realities of the modern academy, which has predominantly assumed the patterns of the capitalist context within which it is embedded. The modern academy serves to produce a workforce and echoes positivist notions of “objective knowing”. Accordingly, a hierarchical model is assumed, along with an orientation toward grinding intrinsic curiosity out of students from a young age and into higher education. This at once supplants tendencies for “disruption” with an inclination to please authority figures, while predisposing students to forgo autonomous and experiential exploration in exchange for “handed -down” knowledge. Yet there is hope, as our dialogue illustrates, when students’ inner lives and spiritual autonomies are prioritized.
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Department of Sociology (Undergraduate Student)

Unleashing a Student’s River of Being: A Dialogic Exploration of Expanding Possibilities

Book Review of <italic>Spirituality and English Language Teaching: Religious Explorations of Teacher Identity, Pedagogy and Context</italic> by Mary Shepard Wong &amp; Ahmar Mahboob. Staple Hill, Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2022

Book Review of <italic>Language Incompetence: Learning to Communicate through Cancer, Disability, and Anomalous Embodiment</italic> by Suresh Canagarajah. London: Routledge, 2022

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Discourses on Culture is a semi-annual scholarly journal. The journal explores and develops the ideas of ‘interculturality’ and ‘interdisciplinarity’ insofar as these constructs are relevant to scholarship. Content published in the journal crosses disciplinary boundaries and often represents the collaborative efforts of authors from disparate backgrounds in Humanities and Social Sciences. The journal’s editors welcome academic discussions which bridge boundaries traditionally separating scholars from the disciplines of applied linguistics, literature and organisation and management studies. Diverse approaches to addressing theoretical, conceptual and methodological issues facilitate plurality in intellectual exchange.  Highlights   Intercultural and multi-disciplinary research approach which crosses subject-specific boundaries.  Innovative tools and methods for exploring aspects of human communication.  New theoretical insights that particularily advance our understanding of applied linguistics, second language learning and teaching, translation studies, literature, cultural studies and organisation and management studies.  Scholarly-based forum for researchers representing different fields of Humanities and Social Sciences. To enrich possibilities for cross-disciplinary synergy, we publish thematic issues which offer scholars, students and trainers the possibility to broaden their conceptual and practical approaches to a wide variety of topics and establish an inclusive  and participatory  academic environment.  To access the open calls for submissions click the tab below. Calls for SubmissionsThe latest version of the index of journals published by the Polish Ministry of Higher Education attributes 100 points to publications in the journal. Open Access Statement  The journal is an Open Access journal that allows a free unlimited access to all its contents without any restrictions upon publication to all users.  Open Access License This journal provides immediate open access to its content under the Creative Commons BY NC ND 4.0 license. Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY NC ND 4.0 license.   Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 

Discourses on Culture

Volume 21 (2024): Issue 1 (June 2024)

Preface: Scholarly Writing as a Spiritual and Reflexive Practice

Scholars as Spiritual Beings: Five Trajectories of Scholarship and Spirituality

Indigenous Place Names: A Literary Toponomastics Study of Suburb Names in Cape Coast

Unleashing a Student’s River of Being: A Dialogic Exploration of Expanding Possibilities

Book Review of Spirituality and English Language Teaching: Religious Explorations of Teacher Identity, Pedagogy and Context by Mary Shepard Wong & Ahmar Mahboob. Staple Hill, Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2022

Book Review of Language Incompetence: Learning to Communicate through Cancer, Disability, and Anomalous Embodiment by Suresh Canagarajah. London: Routledge, 2022

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