<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The turn of the millennium has brought a revival of interest in the ancient Greek and Roman texts. Obviously, the legacy of antiquity is a permanent feature of Western literature and visual arts; yet, its contemporary manifestation has taken a novel form, that of a retelling. It is a new trend in which a well-known text belonging to the canon is given an unorthodox interpretation, which exposes the ethnic, class, and gender prejudices present in the original. Mythological retellings are often written in an accessible manner containing features of genre fiction, which makes the revised version palatable to ordinary readers. A characteristic feature of mythic fantasy is the shift of focus from heroic exploits to private life as well as putting previously marginal characters into limelight. The retellings are a consequence of new, reflexive research angles that have appeared in the field of the classics.
</abstract>

Reflexivity and New Metanarratives. Contemporary English-language Retellings of Classical Mythology

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Throwing food at famous paintings (e.g., a can of soup thrown at Van Gogh’s <italic>Sunflowers</italic>) represents a rather novel form of climate change protest. The study, which is further presented in the article, seeks to unpack the way British mass media cover the food-throwing incidents that take place in the context of climate change activism. To that end, a corpus of texts was collected on the official websites of the leading British mass media outlets that describe the instances of throwing food at the world-known canvases by climate change activists. The corpus was analysed qualitatively in line with the theoretical premises of i) intermedial ecocriticism proposed by Bruhn (2020a, 2020b) and ii) framing methodology developed by Entman (2007). The results of the corpus analysis indicated that British mass media frame the famous paintings involved in the climate change protest incidents by foregrounding the monetary value of the paintings and the extent of damage done to them concurrently with de-emphasising the climate change component. The findings are further discussed and illustrated in the article.
</abstract>

Throwing Soup at Van Gogh: The Framing of Art in Climate Change Activism by British Mass Media

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The first language (L1) is generally considered by multilinguals as the one in which they feel more ‘themselves’ in emotional circumstances. Affective socialization in a foreign language (LX) can help speakers develop a similar level of authenticity when using that language. This study is conducted on a sample of 468 migrants living in Anglophone countries who are L1 speakers of Italian and LX speakers of English, the language of the host society. The objective is to verify if the frequency of use for expressing emotions and the perceived emotional resonance of both languages can predict changes in migrants’ self-perceptions when discussing emotional topics in the LX. Survey data revealed that the emotional resonance of the L1 was the only factor increasing participants’ sense of feeling different when using the LX in emotional conversations. Narratives from 5 interviews and 303 answers to an open-ended survey question suggested that these self- perceptions varied extensively according to the intensity and type of emotion expressed.
</abstract>

‘Am I Sincere about My Feelings?’: Changes in Multilinguals’ Self-perceptions when Discussing Emotional Topics in Different Languages

Black Scholarship: Autoethnographies and Epistemic (in)Justice

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The <italic>Alice in Wonderland</italic> ride in Disneyland, which opened in 1958, was designed to place visitors inside the action, as if seeing things through Alice’s eyes. It drew on the film and on concept artwork, as well as the Lewis Carroll book; and can be seen as a transmedial work, which utilised a complex set of media elements. It can also be considered ekphrastic, in the way it referred to source media texts, but elaborated on them, and repurposed them.
The concept of ekphrasis has traditionally been applied to verbal representations of visual art works. Modern theoretical approaches, however, have challenged the idea that language is the only acceptable target medium; the concept has been applied to different media products, including films, music videos, video games, etc. Cecilia Lindhé (2016) has emphasized the ancient Greco-Roman understanding of ekphrasis, which highlighted the question of <italic>enargeia</italic>: the imaginative and physical response in the reader or viewer. The <italic>Alice</italic> ride was like a journey through a strange dream, a series of random, even surreal encounters; it exemplified the concept of <italic>enargeia</italic>, in making visitors feel, not only as if they were present at events, but that it was happening to them.
</abstract>

Ekphrasis in Disneyland: The <italic>Alice in Wonderland</italic> Ride (1958)

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Our purpose in this article is to explore the phenomenon of scientist’s personal brand (SPB) to better understand the relationship between organizational culture, institutional identity, and a scientist’s (self-) image. In doing so, we used Hatch and Schultz’s model of the dynamic of organizational identity which links culture and image via four processes: 1) mirroring – where identity is mirrored in the image of others; 2) reflecting – where identity is embedded in cultural understanding; 3) expressing – where culture makes itself known through identity claims; and 4) impressing – where expressions of identity leave impressions on others. Qualitative research methods, based on individual In-depth interviews (IDI) with eleven scientists who represented public and private institutions in Poland, allowed the authors to examine and develop the concept of SPB within the context of an organizational identity approach. We found from the IDI four recurring themes: the idea that SPB reflects cultural understanding, mirrors images of others’ expressions of identity, leaves impressions on others, and is constructed through scientists’ reflexive practices.
</abstract>

The Role of the Scientist’s Personal Brand in the Reflexive Construction of Organizational Identity

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

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
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.
</abstract>

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

Preface: Scholarly Writing as a Spiritual and Reflexive Practice

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

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
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.
</abstract>

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

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
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.
</abstract>

Scholars as Spiritual Beings: Five Trajectories of Scholarship and Spirituality

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This paper addresses an ethical issue which comes into play when a scholar sits down to write an article. It concerns rhetorical strategies traditionally employed in top-tier academic journals, specifically in business and management, which efface a unique authorial voice and are reader exclusive. To reclaim authorial voice and embrace the reader’s presence in text construction, we propose approaching scholarly writing as a dialogue between the writer and the reader, an emotional engagement which includes aspects of the notion of ‘tenderness’ coined by Olga Tokarczuk (2019, 2020). Writing with tenderness enables authors to engage with readers in a way that helps them unite fragments of text into a single coherent design.
Because in our digitalised and globalised world, there is a lack of universal values the writer could draw on to craft arguments convincing for the reader, we need to search for new ways to narrate our lives. Our approach involves the inclusion of what Tokarczuk (2019) calls ‘structures of mythology’ which are conceived of as values fundamental for human lives and allow for a wide range of content-dependent interpretations. Incorporating aspects of ‘tenderness’ in the process of text production will have important impact on the utility, accessibility, relevance, quality and global reach of scholarly writing.
</abstract>

Writing Differently about Scholarly Issues: Defending Our Voices and Inviting the Reader

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
No writer has captured the reader’s imagination as vividly as the Marquis de Sade. Per his usual ramblings, he espouses evil via excruciatingly detailed sexual exploits; but, in later writings he is vehemently critical of those who engage in corrosive behavior. In <italic>Reflections on the Novel</italic>, de Sade provides step-by-step instructions to create repelling, enthralling, and memorable fictional narratives, then stratifies “what not to do” in order to avoid situations that may lead to irreparable physical, mental, and emotional damage in real life. In this same pamphlet, he advocates authenticity in writing and ways to empower the budding Sadist. Moreover, he is unique in this discourse because he deviates from previous writings and speaks directly to the audience. This article deconstructs <italic>Reflections on the Novel</italic> and it provides unique writing tenets as suggested by de Sade. These precepts are revolutionary because they provide new avenues of research in entrepreneurship.
</abstract>

What Marquis de Sade’s Literary Critique Can Teach Us about Entrepreneurship

Preface

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Nicole Schneiderbauer’s adaptation of David Markson’s 1988 novel <italic>Wittgenstein’s Mistress</italic> – a first-person account of usually single-sentence paragraphs by a middle-aged woman who believes herself to be the sole inhabitant of the entire world – premiered at Staatstheater Augsburg on 18 November 2022, and quickly garnered much praise for its inventive handling of complex literary material. I saw the performance on December 9, three weeks after the premiere. In this article, I offer an analysis of some of the most important creative choices made by Schneiderbauer in terms of translating Markson’s novel into the language of the stage. As proved by my conversation with the director, her bold decisions – which may at first seem at odds with the spirit of Markson’s novel – are precisely what has ensured the remarkable success of the whole enterprise. Avoiding the novel’s more immediately theatrical aspects, reducing it to a ‘condensate,’ pluralizing the protagonist and dialing down on the absurdist humor, Schneiderbauer has succeeded at what may be the most valuable aspect of adaptation: that it is, in Linda Hutcheon’s memorable words, “repetition with variation.”
</abstract>

A Frame to the Void: Some Remarks on the Staatstheater Augsburg Adaptation of <italic>Wittgenstein’s Mistress</italic> and a Conversation with Nicole Schneiderbauer

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Discourses on Culture

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...

MNiSW

Discourses on Culture is a semi-annual scholarly journal. The journal explores and develops the ideas of ‘interculturality’ and...

Discourses on Culture

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