Globally, student support mechanisms focus almost exclusively on academically ‘under-performing’
students, especially as insofar as academic development practices are concerned. This article makes a
case for a shift in approach. Using the context of one country, South Africa, we sought to better
understand the strengths that academically…[Read more]

From 40 years of experience it is clear that spirituality has become entangled in abstractions: powers, perfection, supernatural, unreal, limitless knowledge, crystal ball perceptions, etc.
Dr Stephen Farra agreed with that – and went one better. Dr Farra stated “Our models are out reality. But our models are not reality. That coincides with the…[Read more]

Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural is, as its title suggests, intensely interested in the socioeconomic valences of spatial relationships, literalized in Yokohama’s affluent hills and its low-lying slums. The central conflict between inhabitants of these two spaces articulates this local topography into a global framework, in which con…[Read more]

This article examines the conflicting representations of plasticity and epigenetics in the work of philosopher Catherine Malabou and evolutionary theorists Mary Jane West-Eberhard and Eva Jablonka. Malabou effaces the unsettled debates within the life sciences in order to speak of a new biological ‘paradigm’ and to attribute values of novelty or…[Read more]

This article examines the conflicting representations of plasticity and epigenetics in the work of philosopher Catherine Malabou and evolutionary theorists Mary Jane West-Eberhard and Eva Jablonka. Malabou effaces the unsettled debates within the life sciences in order to speak of a new biological ‘paradigm’ and to attribute values of novelty or…[Read more]

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit reveals that, in fact, filmmakers have been creating stereo and surround-sound effects for nearly a century, since the advent of talking pictures, and argues that their endurance owes primarily to…[Read more]

This article explores the consequences of the environmental transformations of the Laurentian Valley on the timber trade uniting the Province of Canada and the industrialization of Great Britain during the nineteenth century. The notion of ghost acres used to describe the ecological footprint of resource consumption from abroad is extended to…[Read more]

This article explores the consequences of the environmental transformations of the Laurentian Valley on the timber trade uniting the Province of Canada and the industrialization of Great Britain during the nineteenth century. The notion of ghost acres used to describe the ecological footprint of resource consumption from abroad is extended to…[Read more]

Desde que el hispanista francés Félix Lecoy llamase en 1938 la atención sobre las
peculiaridades de los papeles atribuidos a las mujeres en la obra de Juan Ruiz, numerosos
trabajos académicos se han dedicado a esclarecer en lo posible las coordenadas históricas
y literarias de esta presencia femenina en el Libro de buen amor, sobre todo en lo r…[Read more]

This essay shares the author’s ideas, alluding to depth psychology, philosophy, and comparative culture, particularly East-West differences in the basic worldviews people can have, such as I-Thou, Us vs. Them or We-They, I-Nature or I-Universe, with Asian people tending to live more collectively in a social reality. The essay includes Zen insights…[Read more]

This journalistic essay can give Western readers insight into non-Western logic that the author has found in a long career in Japan. It is also informed by research on intercultural communication, bilingualism and biculturalism. The author teaches those subjects and has a Japanese family. This 2023 update includes the author’s photo taken in Osaka…[Read more]

The act of circulating research through zines invites participants into the “gift economy” of zine culture, where knowledge is shared within a system of reciprocal generosity and pleasure in opposition to hierarchical and capitalist forms of knowledge exchange. As zines cut through the often strict and inaccessible boundaries of traditional, pee…[Read more]

The Covid-19 pandemic, though less prominent in the headlines than in 2020 and 2021, is still with us today and has become part of our cultural memory. This essay looks at the loftily titled Decameron Project (2020), an international volume of what may be called ‘lockdown fiction’, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine. Special attention is…[Read more]

I co-edited this collection of essays about color order and color ordering systems based on a workshop held at TU-Berlin in 2020.
https://bit.ly/Ordering_Colours