Cross-Cultural Studies

Numerous studies have recognized collaboration as an effective way of learning. When collaboration involves students from different cultural backgrounds, a question arises: Will cultural differences influence the manner in which roles are adopted within collaborative learning? In this study, a correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between cultural factors and emerging roles among collaborating students from two universities in different countries (China and USA). The cultural factors that might hypothetically affect their collaboration were approximated to thinking styles by using Sternberg's thinking styles inventory. The roles that students adopted according to preferences were coded with an adapted coding scheme. The results indicate a significant relationship between student thinking styles and the adopted roles of students. This finding implies that cultural factors, exhibited as thinking styles, could explain the emerging roles that are adopted in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). The results could guide teachers in assigning appropriate roles to students with different backgrounds to improve the efficiency of collaboration during cross-cultural CSCL.

Although scholars tend to draw a line of confrontation between the conquerors Normans and the conquered Muslims and Greeks in the kingdom of Sicily, the actual relationship among these people was not so simple. In the kingdom there was a relatively developed bureaucracy staffed by officials with varied cultural backgrounds.  The kings and these bureaucrats took a stand against the aristocrats, who had solely Latin Christian backgrounds.  In fact, the keynote of the political history of the kingdom was a process in which the kings together with bureaucrats held down the aristocrats and cities of the peninsula.  The kings and bureaucrats, who had different cultural backgrounds but were highly educated and cultured, took a stand against aristocrats who were not well cultured but trained as warriors.  However, this line of confrontation was visible only during the peacetime.  During the wartime, a line of confrontation was drawn within aristocrats and cities that had military power.  Aristocrats and cities were divided into a pro-king group and an anti-king one, and fought amongst each other, while bureaucrats were usually on the side of the kings.  This suggests that even the mighty Norman kings supported by the bureaucrats were by no means absolute.  The strong Norman kingship of Sicily was in fact only made possible by a delicate balance of power among aristocrats, cities, and bureaucrats.

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

This volume is a collection of ten essays on the Bible. It reflects the range of biblical reading I have enjoyed doing over the first third of my thirty-year career as student and teacher of the Bible. Having lived in a multifaith, multi-textual, and multicultural context in Malaysia for twenty-four years, I cannot help but think of the given convention of reading: a Chinese Christian reading of the biblical text from a Chinese perspective.

"The role that the involvement of parents may play in the treatment outcome of their
children with anxiety disorders is still under debate. Some studies dealing with other
disorders have examined the role that the expressed emotion (EE) construct (parental
overinvolvement, criticism and hostility) may play in treatment outcome and relapse.
Given that some of these aspects have been associated with social anxiety for a long time,
it was hypothesized that EE may be associated with lower treatment outcome. The sample
was composed of 16 adolescents who benefited from a school-based, cognitive-behavioural
intervention aimed at overcoming social anxiety. Then, parents were classified with
high or low EE. The results revealed that the adolescents whose parents had low EE
showed a statistically significant reduction of their social anxiety scores at posttest, as
opposed to adolescents of parents with high expressed emotion. These findings suggest
that parental psychopathology (parents with high EE) should be taken into consideration
to prevent poor adolescent treatment outcome."

This study is an endeavour on the cutting edge of the field of practical theology. It engages in a pastoral assessment of contemporary men and masculinities in their manifold representations and embodiments. An in-depth assessment of current schemata of interpretation (on the issue of masculinity), is done within different cultural contexts, aiming to hermeneutically put this into dialogue with a pastoral-anthropological view on masculinity. This dialogue is initiated in order to gain deeper insight into diverse masculinities and the challenges they face in their search for meaning, intimacy and vitality. The point of the dialogue here is rather to describe than to prescribe.
The dissertation analyses ‘masculinities as experienced and enacted’ in life and ‘masculinities as represented’ in the mass media as well as in other forms of pop culture, through a multidisciplinary perspective. It is further aimed at the contextual, theological deconstruction of these cultural representations and the establishment and furthering of meaningful connections between male identity, human dignity and Christian spirituality. The focus in contemporary (sociological and psychological) research on masculinity is on enactment of masculinities or ‘doing’ masculinities rather than ‘being’ masculine. The dominant cultural images of masculinity within a globalising life-order suggest and promote materialistic values such as efficiency, performance, mechanisation and functionality. These images are assessed and the interplay between it (the cultural images) and conceptualisations of God (God-images) are explored.
This study asserts that men’s identity, self-understanding and spirituality is shaped in many ways by these images, but that the image of the crucified and risen Christ can indeed serve as a meaningful and normative-critical counter-image to the macho-images portrayed by most postmodern masculinities (which many men presently experience as confusing). This counter-image of Christ can transcend the abuse of power, the focus on performance and the commodification of male embodiment, in men’s lives, as they engage in a spirituality of vulnerable courage. A pastoral-anthropological perspective is employed in order to shift the emphasis on male identity in terms of gender and sexuality, towards a spiritual understanding of male identity in terms of human dignity and human destiny (i.e. the quest for meaning). The important question of the relationship between power, masculinity and male embodiment is addressed. Essentialist ideas about masculinity are deconstructed, and a re-interpretation thereof is introduced within a view of reality that affirms and embraces an earth-centred and embodied spirituality. Masculinity and male identity is in that sense “saved” from a commercial reduction by means of an eschatological and pneumatological perspective. This theological re-interpretation of masculinity presents a critical factor on the cultural notion that manhood is something that must be validated by means of performance (especially on the terrain of sexuality).
Masculinity, viewed from an eschatological perspective, is thus more than virility that has to be manifested by doing functions. The culturally-determined understanding of masculinity - in terms of brutal power and control – is in this sense ‘emasculated’ in this study. In the light of Christ’s resurrection, there is new hope for the re-interpretation of masculinity. The postmodern man’s resurrection is therefore not guaranteed by the “Viagra-magic blue pill”, but in actual fact by the resurrection of Christ who daily unleashes and affirms new meaningful dimensions of hope in the globalised life-matrix.
The power of masculinity thus lies in embodying vulnerability and mutual relationality, contesting unilateral and hierarchical relations. Within this context manhood is not equal to the size of achievement or success, nor performances or powerful penetration, but it rather denotes the capacity for lovingly hospitable relationships and the measure of the soul’s depth of character, i.e. its capacity to embody and affirm the courage to be.

In order to better cope with the pressures and stresses of the current day, modern psychology is anxiously seeking to find new therapies to address the increasing disorders within the human psyche. In the process new fields of research, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, curiously appear to borrow more and more from the wisdom of the ages. This volume, containing eighteen articles by noteworthy expositors of the perennial philosophy such as Huston Smith, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Frithjof Schuon, presents the spiritual psychology of the wisdom traditions as a much-needed antidote to the current impasse in modern psychology.

Some Endorsements for Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy:

“[Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy] is more than an anthology. It is a wisely crafted collection of classic and contemporary scholarship noting that what many are seeking is what has always been, a perennial philosophy, that remains foundational. As one of the authors, Tage Lindbom, properly notes, ‘Secularization is a fish in troubled waters.’ This book claims the waters and is essential reading for all those who may have forgotten or are simply ignorant of the rich foundation provided by the perennial philosophy.”
—Ralph W. Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, past president of the Psychology of Religion division of the American Psychological Association, co-founder of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and co-author of The Psychology of Religion

“A necessary and bracing critique of the assumptions and limitations of contemporary Western psychology, this generous volume is also a passionate call and learned guide towards a truer perspective that embraces man's spiritual nature.”
—Gabor Maté, M.D., and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“Knowing the nature of the mind is perhaps the most difficult undertaking, especially in today’s world. To comprehend the nature of mind one needs to turn to the domain of religion and spirituality. Yet the truth of the mind and its complexity cannot explicitly be defined in words. Inner or transcendent wisdom sees the mind’s own nature without the duality of the seer. Suchness (tathatā) of mind is only experiential and not expressible. The words used to describe thought are themselves a product of thought, which is conditioned and limited. Thus, differences and contradictions are unavoidable. Therefore, a comparative study of different viewpoints and commentaries is immensely important to awaken the inner intelligence to see the mind as it is. Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy: Studies in Comparative Religion edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is an outstanding effort in this direction.”
—Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister (Kalon Tripa) of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, author of Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism and Today’s World

“The rise of psychology has impacted the study and practice of spirituality, the experiences and attitudes relevant to ultimate human values that transcend ordinary behavior. Each chapter of this remarkable book demonstrates this interaction in a unique and provocative way. But rather than using psychology to reduce and ‘psychologize’ spiritual topics, its authors demonstrate how directives from the spiritual traditions can enhance and even illuminate the enduring importance of psychology in the 21st century.”
—Stanley Krippner, Saybrook University, co-author of Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

“The work at hand is a thinking and debating man’s delight. If you have any interest at all in attempting to include an educated and enlightened view of man’s higher functions in your purview of the world, you will learn from and enjoy this collection of essays. If you already have some knowledge in this area, brace yourself: you may see some of your favorites sharply criticized. A thought-provoking work.”
—Bruce W. Scotton, University of California, San Francisco, co-editor of Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology

“This book, superbly edited by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, is a masterful critique of the field of psychology and its loss of the sacred ground in which it once was rooted. It offers depth psychologists an opportunity to contemplate timeless truths echoed through the centuries by perennial philosophers who have always claimed psyche is subordinate to Spirit. Although ignored in depth psychology’s early years due to prejudice and lack of understanding, this is a message today’s psychotherapists must take seriously. Human beings need a deeper and wider transpersonal vision of who and what we are, which the saints and sages of the world’s spiritual traditions have always pointed to. In psychotherapy with a therapist committed to such a vision, patients penetrate into their unconscious depths and not infrequently awaken to the Ground of all Being. Their suffering itself occurred because they had turned away from Spirit. Above all, this volume passionately calls upon depth psychology to remember its origin in the perennial wisdom at the core of the great religions. There is something of a polemic in these pages. It deserves to be considered by depth psychologists of all persuasions.”
—Bryan Wittine, Transpersonal psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst

“This anthology from Samuel Bendeck Sotillos is a must reference for anyone who is interested in psychology and its relationship to spirituality, and in developing an inclusive dialogue between disciplines that favor an integral outlook on the person and his or her potential. Selections in this anthology will inspire us to reexamine the metaphysical underpinnings of psychology, and remind us how important it is to rise above science’s attempt to reduce the human being to an epistemic object.”
—Sangeetha Menon, National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore, India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in Bhagavad Gita

“This anthology has some of the most discerning essays and reviews on spirituality and psychology, which provide much-needed care and caution to all those engaged in bringing them together or who wish to do so in future. Therefore, it is a must-read for all those who teach, research, consult, or study in such frontier areas as transpersonal psychology, states of consciousness, mind-body relation, holistic health, Indian psychology, and so on. It will be an invaluable textbook for courses in these and other related areas. I congratulate the editor of the book.”
—Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, University of Mysore (India), Board Member of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), author of The Psychology of Meditation: A Contextual Approach

“One of the finest collections of essays on the Perennial Philosophy—a must-read for all psychologists who are engaged with spirituality and transpersonal psychology. The essays which critique modern psychology (including transpersonal psychology, and the framework of Carl Jung), in the light of the Perennial Philosophy are a revelation and make compelling reading. The book serves as a corrective to the excesses of modern psychology, and to this end Sotillos has done a commendable job. I for one will include the book in some of the graduate courses that I teach.”
—Suneet Varma, University of Delhi, co-editor of Foundations of Indian Psychology

“To its credit modern science by-and-large is becoming more cognizant of the essential connection between spirituality and psychological health and well-being and most of all its positive implications within the field of psychology. While there is ample data to document this in a plethora of academic journals and books, this new book Psychology and the Perennial Philosophy adds a novel contribution to the dialogue between psychology and spirituality, which captures many nuances that for the most part go unnoticed within these discussions, and last but not least, it provides a keen eye of discernment to understand this intricate relationship on a deeper level that is crucially needed. This work will be a valuable asset to students and long term mental health practitioners and professors alike who seek to better understand the relationship between psychology and spirituality.”
—Harold G. Koenig, Duke University, Director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, co-author of The Handbook of Religion and Health

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

In an increasingly fast-changing, complex and diverse world, social and emotional skills are becoming ever more important. In this paper we present an overview of literature on social and emotional skills, describing the nature and structure of these skills, their development, malleability and factors that influence them, their cross-cultural comparability and their relevance for a wide range of educational, economic and life outcomes. The paper also represents a conceptual framework for the OECD’s new Study on Social and Emotional Skills, an international survey that assesses 10- and 15-year-old students in a number of cities and countries around the world.
We focus on the underlying skills within and outside of the widely researched Big Five model that are found to be more predictive and policy relevant. We examine the relationships of these skills with a variety of indicators of individual and societal wellbeing such as education, employment and income, health, and personal well-being. The paper discusses the structure of child’s social and emotional skills and the developmental trajectories of these skills across a lifetime. It presents the evidence of malleability of these skills as well as their relevance across a wide range of cultural contexts.

In the paper, we express some doubts about one of the assumptions
of Robert Carneiro’s model on state (and chiefdom) formation,
namely the role of circumscription. In our opinion, the main flaw of
Carneiro’s original theory of state formation is that it implicitly
assumes that every community dreamt to conquer its neighboring
communities. We test the presence of various types of warfare (such
as conquest warfare, land acquisition warfare, and plunder warfare)
in societies with different degrees of political centralization.
Quantitative cross-cultural tests reveal a rather strong correlation
between political complexity and the presence of conquest warfare
suggesting that conquest warfare was virtually absent among
independent communities. Newer works by Carneiro propose a
model explaining how simple chiefdoms could appear in the absence
of conquest warfare. This model also includes circumscription, but
our analysis suggests that it is unnecessary.

American painters’ travel and/or stay in Morocco during the pre-colonial era resulted in a considerably large compendium of American paintings of the Moroccan landscape with its people, animals, architecture and natural scenes. The tableaus eternize historical, social and cultural moments, and tell aquatic stories of what many an American genius does when they catch or are caught under the effect of the Moroccan colors. The corpus acquires a further importance thanks to the multiplicity of perspectives and points of view of the different painters. The aim of the present paper is to shed some light on the works of the travelling American painters who visited Morocco, especially during the pre-colonial period of Moroccan history. The intention is not to ‘revisit’ such paintings with a counter-discourse but to appreciate them from an Other’s point of view. It is mostly an analysis of some of these paintings from a Moroccan perspective. Due to the diversity of schools and the difference in the quality of the artistic works, we find no way to escape the sampling strategy, hence the focus on a selection of painters deemed to be more representative of American travelling painters.

MÖ. 7. binyıl pek çok bakımdan Yakın-Doğu Tarihi’nde bir dönüm noktası oluşturur. “Çanak-Çömleksiz Neolitik” (Erken Neolitik: MÖ. 10000-7000) adı verilen dönem, binyıl başında yerini “Çanak-Çömlekli Neolitik”e (Geç Neolitik: MÖ. 7000-5500) bırakır. Geç Neolitik’te önceki devrin anıtsal mimarisi ve mega-köylerinden eser yoktur. Bu yüzden MÖ 7. binyıl toplumlarının kültürel açıdan bir “gerileme” yaşadığı ve karmaşık toplum adımlarının zayıfladığı yanılgısına düşülür. Oysa küçülen yerleşimlerde hareketli (yarı-göçebe) çobanlık uygulamalarına geçilmiş; avcı-toplayıcı pratikler zayıflamış, ev ekonomisi büyük ölçüde çiftçilik-besiciliğe dayalı hale gelmiş; çömlek teknolojisi geliştikçe besin saklama ve taşıma olanakları artmış; ikincil ürünler devrimi sayesinde evcil hayvanların eti kadar sütü ve yününden de yararlanılır olmuştur. İklimdeki soğuma ve kuraklaşma da, Neolitik toplumlarının doğaya karşı mukavemetini artıran bir faktördür. İşte böylesi bir dönüşümler çağında, Yukarı ve Aşağı Mezopotamya’da çanak-çömlek stilleri üzerinden ayırt edebildiğimiz ilk bölgesel kültürlerin ortaya çıktığını görürüz. Kuzeyden güneye Halaf, Hassuna ve Samarra, kültürel etkileşim evrenleri olarak belirmiş; MÖ. 6. binyıl boyunca bu üç kültür arasındaki karşılaşma/temas, Halaf’ın diğerlerini soğurmasıyla sonuçlanmıştır. Geç 6. binyılda ise, Aşağı Mezopotamya’nın en erken kültürü Ubeyd’in hızla kuzeyi etkisi altına aldığını ve Halaf’ın sonunu getirdiğine tanık oluruz. Giderek “devlet-öncesi karmaşık toplum”u temsil eden Ubeyd’in yaygınlığı, Mezopotamya’da uygarlığın gelişini haber vermektedir. Bu bildirinin amacı, bölgenin erken kültürleri arasındaki “temas”ın yoğunluğunu ve erken karmaşık toplumların hangi koşullarda belirdiğini araştırmaktır.

(ENG) Perception and restoration of the Ottoman Architecture of 18th and 19th centuries in Istanbul: Construction, conservation and identity from the Empire to the Republic

(TR) İstanbul'da 18. ve 19. yüzyıl Osmanlı mimarisinin algılanışı ve restorasyonu: İmparatorluktan cumhuriyete inşa, koruma ve kimlik

Abstract:
Starting from the publication of Usul-u Mimari-i Osmani in 1873, Ottomans began to display a certain sense of alienation towards the architecture built in the capital of the empire since the early 1740s. In this text, the post-classical Ottoman architecture was criticised for being unoriginal, excessively Westernized, and far from the “local” artistic values. Therefore, the so-called Ottoman Baroque of the XVIII century and the Eclectic buildings of the following decades, which at their moment served as a tool for refreshing the capital with new sultanic images, started being overtly refused.  After the earthquake which heavily damaged Istanbul in 1894, many buildings of the capital underwent important restorations, initiating a new relation with the artistic and architectural heritage of the post-classical period. Throughout the XIX century and till ca 1960s, the elements which were not seen as “fully Ottoman” were replaced by new, archaizing ones in different degrees and manners. This essay investigates how the Ottomans adopted and subsequently refused the Western-related forms in building and conservation practices and in which manner the Early Republic in Turkey has dealt with the question. The cultural identity, construction and conservation matters are interrogated together to give a panorama of the subject, trying to understand the social and political dynamics of Istanbul in the aforementioned period.

Auditory display has a long history as a tool to provide people with events and the needed actions by means of sound. The use of audio as media has its advantage of being non-directional and the ability to cover a large area. The field of auditory display design had a continuous improvement in the past years. As a major factor in developing a design is is to be easy to be recognized by the most of the listeners , as well as and simple in terms of understand the semantics and implications behind it. This area of study has been the interest of the industry and the scholars. Where all employed new and experimental methods that can be accepted as a social standard and an appropriate for the environment. In the awareness of the salient of the phenomena of using music as a method in creating an auditory display , raised the questions about how the music can transmit the information as alarm, what are the music and sound elements that have major role on the effectiveness and sensitivity on the listeners, and what are the concerns that can affect learnability aspect. The cultural respect of the music learnability and preferences can be an example of musical training and personality in different countries such as the Japanese train station alarms or the Japanese ambulance sirens . Considering these aspects this project will be an attempt to discuss the music in the auditory alarms design. As well as continuation to my previous project which spot the light on the contrast between icons and melodic alarms in regard of aspects of learnability and the sonic environment consideration . This project will include the process of designing melodic auditory display. As well as it will investigate the possible feature for improvement . It is a multidisciplinary progression that includes psychoacoustics, musicology and engineering. the project could be an interest for music composers , researchers , and industrial designers.

Topic: Developing Cultural Intelligence and Leadership
The presentation focuses on defining and explaining Cultural Intelligence (CQ) as a capability to work and relate successfully across cultures. Examples of CQ application in business and academia will be shared, along with empirical field results of Slovenian Cultural Intelligence research (focus group and youth testing). The researcher will outline four dimensions of CQ (metacognitive, cognitive, motivational and behavioral) and offers a range of strategies for measuring and advancing each skill set for leaders in organizations. Increasingly, organizational leaders understand that improving CQ competencies is the first step toward enhancing the quality of their work. Internal staff CQ testing and further assessment of results can help develop company-specific norms, strategies, and interventions based upon what the data reveals. Knowledge of staff CQ scores can help identify improvements for more effective operations.
Key words: Cultural Intelligence, cross-cultural leadership, Slovenia.

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences and similarities in competency training for scientific research of high school students in Mexico and Germany. The data collection was accomplished through focus groups, in which the young bachelor's students of the Savia project exchanged their perspectives with German students of the Internatsschule Schloss Hansenberg, programs oriented to the promotion of scientific vocations. The results of the study indicate that the main differences are related to opportunities for access to science and technology education, access to information, investment in researchers training and the way teachers work from basic education.

Heinrich Heine and Paul Celan have often been compared, mainly because of their shared Parisian exile and Jewish identity. Yet we should add another dimension to this comparison, by examining the authors’ relationship to their French-language texts. In fact, although Heine and Celan have always considered themselves as German-speaking writers, their perfect bilingualism and active participation in French literary circles made it possible for them to exert an early and considerable influence upon their own reception in France. This particularly affected the translation of their works, which were intensely managed and controlled by both poets. However, their influence on the French versions of their texts took very different forms: Heine alleged to be the author of the French version of his writings, hiding the work of the translator, whereas Celan never wanted to appear as a self-translator, even if he played a key role in the development of the French translations of his works. Thus Heine’s French works appear to be staged self-translations, produced mostly by French translators, while many of the French translations of Celan are actually very close to disguised self-translation. In both cases the original connection between the author and his text is upheld and the movement of estrangement and disappropriation, inherent in translation, is impeded or even stopped.

This second volume presents modern strategies in the teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) from the perspectives of multi-cultural communication, linguistic theory and praxis. Several chapters in the book are taken from the session “ESL Studies” held at the 2015 and 2016 PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) conferences. The collection, written by scholars from a range of countries, including Germany, Italy, Romania, Mexico, Russia, and the USA, examines current methods of English language learning from the perspectives of the global environment, cross-cultural analysis and modern digital space.

Hospitality begins with God’s generous gift of Eden to the creatures of the Earth. Eden is abundant, verdant, and renewable. After the expulsion nomadic peoples learned to look out for one another, to share what they had in order to survive – especially wandering outside the metaphorical plenty of Eden, where “welcome,” “ahlan” in Arabic, manifests as hospitality.

This paper looks at basic ethics of hospitality in Judaism and Islam, with the Bible and Qur’an as fundamental ingredients in the recipe.  There will be sprinklings of Pirqei Abot, some ethical and philosophical flavors from medieval scholars including Moses Maimonides and Abû Hâmid Muhammad Al Ghazali, and tastings from their intellectual descendants: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and University of Edinburgh’s Mona Siddiqui, OBE.  We begin along the emergent Masar Ibrahim or Abraham Path, with villagers offering hospitality in everyday encounters with the strangers that walk by. Through these actual moments we will see that text and tradition merge into practical demonstrations of welcome. Hospitality in both Jewish and Islamic traditions is ethical, moral, and natural.

The designations of the orange fruit in Indo-European languages very often literally meant “apple from China”. Citrus species were known in the Chinese cultural area in the fifth century BCE and glossed in c.100 CE, but there is no basic colour term for orange in Modern Standard Mandarin. This colour category is psychologically salient, but it is still inseparable from a concrete object in the mind of a native speaker, and can therefore be defined as starting to become basic. This article also suggests modification of Berlin and Kay’s (1969: 6) first criterion for basicness in colour terms: applied to Chinese, a term should be monomorphemic and, moreover, monosyllabic – rather than just monolexemic – since almost every syllable is a morpheme in Chinese.

Mini-Balance Evaluation Systems Test (mini-BESTest) is a newly developed functional scale which combines clinical balance tests already in use, with new items. Its easiness in utility and its ability to detect the affected system of balance control, make it a valuable tool for balance assessment. However, its unavailability in Greek language lead to the need for the cross-cultural adaptation of the scale into Greek, which is the main aim of this study. The mini-BESTest was adapted according to international guidelines of forward and backward translation by four bilingual translators and was piloted to 10 patients with various balance problems, and to 5 licensed physiotherapists for its wording comprehension. The final Greek version (mini-BESTest GR) was tested for its reliability and validity on 122 patients with balance disorders (47 men 75 women, 67±18 years). Two raters administered the scale for its inter-rater reliability and twice in 10 days period for the test-retest reliability. Concurrent (criterion) validity of the scale was assessed by correlation of the scale to the Greek Berg Balance Scale (BBS GR). The construct (convergent) validity was assessed by correlation of the mini-BESTest GR with the Timed Up and Go test (TUG), the Functional Reach Test (FRT), and the Greek Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES-I GR). The translation process was completed without difficulties and the scale was characterized as safe, simple and easy to be administered. It also showed excellent test-retest (ICC= .966) and inter-rater reliability (ICC= .997) and very strong internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha= .833). Correlation with the BBS GR was very strong (r= .858, p<0.001), while moderate to strong were the correlations of the mini-BESTest GR to the TUG (r=-.746, p<0.001), the FRT (r=.616, p<0.001), the FES-I GR (r=-.527, p<0.001). In conclusion, the excellent psychometric properties of the mini-BESTest GR opens the way for its utility on Greek patients with various balance deficits.

Everybody is born into a family. Each has its own history, therefore, 'our history' is not made by us, but by previous generations. The rise of International migration and the crumbling of family structures, however, only make it harder for descendants to learn about their family history. Inhibited by language and geographical barriers as well as lost connections to the bearers of knowledge, many offspring of migrant families year for answers to questions such as 'Where do I come from?' or 'How did I get here?' Answering these requires re-establishing lost connections and meeting family one previously did not know. This paper illustrates how the juxtaposition of two generations of Chinese Australian migrants' narrative (a 'pioneer migrant' and an 'overseas born Chinese' are vital to piecing together a segment of family history.

Intercultural competence (Cross-culture competence) has become the focus of foreign language education. Awareness of the target culture is now one of the most discussed issues in the literature of the foreign language education. Raising language learners’ intercultural competence has become, now more than ever, an indispensable objective of the EFL education in Saudi Arabia. To investigate this issue, this paper aims at exploring some Saudi EFL learners’ views and attitudes toward learning about the target culture’s practices using both quantitative and qualitative data. Overall, the results showed that Saudi EFL learners were willing to learn about the target culture. Based on the data analysis, this paper concludes with proposing a model for developing language learners’ intercultural competence. The literature of EFL intercultural competence is huge and complex, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to cover all the related issues.

The availability of language services for patients with limited English proficiency has become a standard of care in the United States. Finding the resources to pay for language programs is challenging for providers, payers, and policymakers. There is no federal payment policy and states are developing policies using different methodologies for determining costs and reimbursement rates.  is paper establishes a conceptual framework that identifies program costs, can be used across health care entities, and can be understood by administrators, researchers, and policymakers to guide research and analysis and establish a common ground for informed strategic discussion of payment and reimbursement policy. Using case study methods, a framework was established to identify costs and included determining the perspective of the cost analysis as well as distinguishing between the financial accounting costs (direct, indirect, and overheard costs) and the economic opportunity and subsequent utilization costs.

Masters of the World. On the Origins of Jewish Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories about the Jews endlessly flourish around us. Usually, they have been studied in connection with the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged document of the beginning of 20th century. Interpreted as a myth or a paranoid style of thought, denunciation of world Jews conspiracy has been considered as an inve- terate, quite a-historical inclination to misinterpret reality. As a result, little attention has been paid to the origins of the hoax and to his context of appearance. This essay wants to scrutinise the conditions of emergency of the world Jewish conspiracy as a technique to perturb public opinion. It does so in retracing the context of the invention of world conspiracy theory about the Jews in 19th century from a varied complex of hybridization, both cultural and technical. From myth to denunciation, this paper aims to enlighten the transmedia process that produces conspiracy theory, an un- tangled history of mass journalism, plagiarism from fiction to non-fiction products, transmigration of iconographic items as well as textual evidences. Following this approach, the creators of Jews conspiracy theory as well as their modus operandi are debunked and the identity of the author of the «Rabbi’s Speech» at the cemetery of Prague – a forged document and main source of the Protocols – is detected.