Chapter Q&A with Annamaria Pagliaro: From Italy to Australia and Back

This essay-interview traces Annamaria Pagliaro’s contribution to cultural relationships, cultural and educational exchanges between Australia and Italy, particularly based on her work as Director of the Monash University Prato Centre (2005-2008)

Foreword

This section brings together a number of essays in the fields of cultural, social, literary and language/linguistics theories currently in progress within and outside Australia, which are variously informed by its cultural, historical, and geographical background. Ranging from second-language teaching, translation, singing and performance, social policy-oriented design workshops, feminist ecocricitism, and Italy-Australia cultural (dis)similarities the contributions focus on the idea of space – in a metaphorical, psychological, and geographical sense – to question research contexts and aims

‘Queer Natures’: Feminist Ecocriticism, Performativities, and Ellen van Neerven’s “Water”

This paper brings together queer ecological thought, ecofeminism, and feminist ecocriticism to explore forms of embodied resistance against intersectional, complex oppressions of women, races, and lands. It looks at the award-winning Indigenous Australian writer Ellen van Neerven’s short story, “Water” (from the 2014 collection, Heat and Light) to canvas an anti-essentialised queer feminist politics and ethics of care through which to shape utopian futures after sovereignty, after the West, after patriarchy, after whiteness

Emma in Borderlands: Q&A with Emma Donoghue

This interview/article expands on Emma Donoghue’s role in contemporary Irish culture. Introducing Donoghue as novelist, playwright, and cultural historian is a critical biography which, through the metaphor of travelling along borderlands covers over twenty years of Donoghue’s background, life, and works

Intercultural enrichment programs: A contribution to curriculum development and study abroad in transnational education

In the fast evolving context of globalised higher education, increasing academic mobility requires constant adaptation from institutions. This paper focuses on intercultural enrichment programs, often perceived as mere “add ons” to study abroad, and usually designed as optional not-for-credit extracurricular offerings. We investigate how institutions can give more value to and deepen the intercultural learning of more students in spite of constraints of time and of formal curriculum during short-term study abroad experiences. Resulting from a close collaboration between academic and administrative staff based at different campuses, this paper provides a critical analysis of the benefits and challenges involved in developing co-curricular intercultural enrichment programs that support formal curriculum during study abroad. Practical recommendations are based on a transdisciplinary program developed in Italy by an Australian university that has branch campuses in different countries. We also discuss the “digitally enhanced” aspects of the program which facilitate the in-class activities

Exploring the transnational connections between blended learning spaces, trans-institutional collaboration, and intercultural awareness in transformative telecollaborative projects

This introductory essay aims to shed light on the theoretical raison d’être, the intersections within, and the main lines shared by the five essays that make up this section. The section is dedicated to transnational and blended learning spaces in telecollaborative, trans-institutional projects. This piece pivots on the increasingly important and pervasive theoretical notion of the “Spatial Turn” (Bachmann-Medick 2016, 211-243), which has become increasingly visible in, among other fields, pedagogy and cultural studies, and more specifically in the idea of boundary-crossing and hybridisation not only of physical but also of methodological spaces. This introductory essay shows how these five scholarly pieces contribute in different ways to enriching the interdisciplinary scholarly space at the intersection of intercultural awareness and technology- enhanced teaching and learning of foreign languages and cultures