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New issue of "The Journal of Transcultural Studies" online

Date:

Date: 

1 July 2022

The Journal of Transcultural Studies
is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal committed to promoting research on transculturality. Launched in 2010, it is published by the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) and hosted by Heidelberg University´s publishing branch
heiUP. 
The current issue of the Journal (Summer 2021) was edited by Prof. Dr.
Monica Juneja, Chair of
Global Art history at the HCTS, and Prof. Dr.
Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, Executive Director of the Institute for Classical Archaeology at the University of Heidelberg. In this issue of the journal, which was prepared from start to finish during the pandemic crisis, the reader will have the opportunity to follow the stunning trajectory of a medieval clothing item through space and time, as it underwent several creative processes of appropriation and acquired various symbolic meanings; to track the transcultural encounters of the legendary tradition of glass making in Renaissance Venice through the itineraries of its materials and artefacts; to embark on a delightful and thought-provoking culinary journey on the pathways of diasporic cuisine through a remarkable piece of memoir literature; and finally, to acknowledge that transculturality is not only a theoretical tool, but also has potential for educational strategy. 
In a contribution that investigates a case study going back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, during a time pre-dating the advent of global capital and modern communication technologies,
Vladimir Aleksić and Mariachiara Gasparini underline the importance of analyzing historical forms of transculturation. Their article takes as its starting point two portraits of the fourteenth-century nobleman John Oliver preserved in the monastery of Lesnovo in present-day Serbia, both of which depicting him wearing a cloud collar. This richly detailed, carefully reconstructed investigation throws fresh light on the seminal role of objects and their visual replication, their re-historicization and re-signification within a transcultural constitution of politics and its symbols across vast distances. 
Emily Hyatt’s contribution to this issue problematizes a key trope of art history: the labels attached to objects. Such labels are simultaneously ascriptions of identities and myths of origins, and end up suppressing the transcultural lives of things. Her account of the history of glass making in the workshops of the Venetian island of Murano draws our attention to processes of “Venetianization” of these  coveted  objects: a conflation of matter and meaning cemented the prestige of glass  objects produced there, as the fabled material qualities of finished glass came to be equated with a single locality, Venice, perceived as self-contained.  
Emilio Amideo provides ample “food for thought” in his exploration of the way Barbadian diasporic food culture is reflected in the “culinary memoir” of Austin Clarke. As Amideo reminds us, we are heirs to a rich body of scholarship and thought that makes us aware that food is not merely a biological necessity, but also sustains the soul and its worlds of meaning, collectively, culturally, and historically. In the perspective of such work, the diasporic foodways Clarke portrays emerge as a complex site for the (re)construction and  maintenance  of  individual  and  collective  memory, community and belonging, nostalgia and identity, and the negotiation of migrant experience. 
In the concluding essay of this issue, the conventional model of national cultures, with its deep impact on cross-cultural studies, becomes the object of thoughtful criticism that revolves not only around its theoretical core but also around its applicability beyond academia. 
Thor-André Skrefsrud’s compelling attempt to problematize previous research—and  action—in this field begins with an evaluation of Geert Hofstede’s premise that each member of a community carries a distinctive mindset heavily determined by its national culture. 
The current issue of The Journal of Transcultural Studies is available in open format
here. The journal archive can be accessed
here.
For those interested in submitting a manuscript for a future edition of our open access journal, please contact the editorial team (
jts-editors@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de).