Three articles originally published in the American electronic literary magazine Webgeist: 1) “Olympic Results Reflect Trajectory of Post-War Japan,” 2) “Language as a Window into Japanese Culture,” and 3) “Educational Rigors Begin Early in East Asia.” The series begins lightheartedly observing patterns in post-War Japanese society, secondly…[Read more]

While language contact has so far been predominantly studied on the basis of detailed case studies, the emergence of methods for phylogenetic reconstruction and automated word comparison – as a result of the recent quantitative turn in historical linguistics – has also resulted in new proposals to study language contact situations by means of aut…[Read more]

In Castile, where the purity of blood supposedly did not allow the merchants access to the privileged, we found an extremely powerful and rich group, the Cargadores a Indias. This group was made up of international merchants, almost all from humble origins, in many cases converso, who rose socially in a vertiginous way. For this, they were…[Read more]

Nine various essays from 1999-2000 in The Education Companion Newsletter based in New York City: 1) “Culture Crossed” [humor], 2) “More Culture Crossed”; 3) “Making Real Haiku Poetry”; 4) “The Woman Diver: Discovering East Asian Values in a Buddhist Folktale”; 5) “Conducting Academic Conferences Online”; 6) “Motivating Interfaces for the 2000s”;…[Read more]

The fact that “all languages evolve, as long as they exist” (Schleicher 1863: 18f) has been long known to linguists and does not surprise us anymore. The reasons why all language change constantly, however, is still not fully understood. What we know, however, is that language usage must be at the core of language evolution. It is the dynamics amo…[Read more]

Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right-wing populism since the second world war, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. Yet wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the gatekeepers of liberal progress and cosmopolitan openness. This article argues that Hamburg’s ur…[Read more]

How, why and under what conditions do new racial categories form? This dissertation examines the construction of South and Southeast Asian migrants (tongnama) as a new racial category in South Korea: a country in a continent long neglected within studies of race. Through ethnographic research on foreign migrant workers and marriage immigrants in…[Read more]

In addition to the enigmatic The Codomas, Henri Matisse distinguished three other images with a name, Icarus, Monsieur Loyal and Pierrot’s Funeral for his landmark livre d’artiste Jazz. While the characters Loyal, Pierrot and Icarus were readily identifiable and the images could be interpreted within the context of the difficulties of the Ger…[Read more]

The ability of the United States (U.S.) to influence policies in Colombia is indisputable. The U.S. is Colombia’s largest trading partner, and this alone provides the U.S. with great power with regards to Colombian policymaking. U.S. power is not only manifest within the economic realm, though, as Colombia is a consumer of many U.S. cultural p…[Read more]

Disrupting Maize undertakes a critical interrogation of the symbol and the staple food of the Mexican nation. As the centre of origin and genetic diversification of maize, the Mexican territory is regarded today as being under threat of irreversible ‘contamination’ by genetically engineered maize, an imported biotechnological product. When the fir…[Read more]

In the first section I provide a historical overview of structural violence, science studies, and feminism in Mexico. Structural violence appears first as the immediate context in which some Mexican scientists and academics have recently intensified their struggles to articulate “science” with social justice. Yet I offer a deeper account of how…[Read more]

Based on ethnographic research that is part of a larger project on the role of music and sound among migrant Moroccan men in Italy, this article focuses
on ‘L-ḥərraga’, a song that narrates the voyage and the experience of undocumented migration that ends with the tragic death of a young
Moroccan man crossing the Mediterranean. Through ‘L-ḥər…[Read more]

This presentation covers some basic elements of data collection methods, fieldwork and interacting with speakers of a critically endangered language.

This is a summary of 12 contributions made by me for the blog “The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks” in 2017. The contributions are shared in form of a PDF document with a table of contents that allows for a quick search of the contributions and offers also the direct links to the blog.

This is a summary of 12 contributions made by me for the blog “The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks” in 2016. The contributions are shared in form of a PDF document with a table of contents that allows for a quick search of the contributions and offers also the direct links to the blog.

In the wake of modernism studies’ global turn, this article considers the role of translation in fostering Iranian modernism. Focusing on the poetic translations of Bijan Elahi (1945-2010), one of Iran’s most significant poet-translators, we demonstrate how untranslatability becomes a point of departure for his experimental poetics. Elahi used pre…[Read more]

The article reflects on the relationship between the internationalization of higher education and language policies in Brazil. The study provides a review of language policy literature and internationalization policies materialized in national programs, such as the Science without Borders (SwB) and the Languages without Borders (LwB). The analysis…[Read more]

A disillusioning experience with Donald Keene coincided with an invitation from a haiku journal to write a feature article clarifying essential features of haiku that are not beyond the capacity of non-Japanese to create in Japanese and other languages.

Japan Times guest editorials and selected letters from 1985-1990 on the Japanese as unique individuals, proposed school year reforms, an elegy for the Showa Emperor, biculturalism, and cultural liberation. Two photos from that period are included at the end: holding a friend’s scroll stamped with seals from each of the 88 temples of the Pilgrimage…[Read more]