Multicultural Discourses in Turbulent Times
Edited by Alexandra Cotoc, Octavian More and Mihaela Mudure
Presa Universitara Clujeana, 2021
299 pages
ISBN 9786063712616

Multicultural Discourses in Turbulent Times, edited by Alexandra Cotoc, Octavian More, and Mihaela Mudure is a compelling collection of essays which were first presented in the 7th International Conference on Multicultural Discourses held in 2020, organized by the English Department of the faculty of letters at Babes-Bolyai University, Romania, and the School of Contemporary Chinese Communication Studies at Hangzhou Normal University, China. Therefore, the collection displays ideas of scholars from different corners of the globe that allow the reader to delve into the rich tapestry of insights presented within these pages. Thus, the publication surpasses geographical and disciplinary boundaries by presenting a diverse assortment of scholarly articles that investigate the complex and diverse aspects of cultural perspectives within the context of turbulent times. The scholars featured in this publication utilize various methodologies to scrutinize and construe discourse, shedding light on cultural phenomena from both past and present perspectives across different stages of professional growth.

The book is structured into three extensive chapters. The first, titled “Cultures and Discourses,” comprises four papers, that explore the complex interrelationship between cultural environments and the ways in which discourses influence our understanding of the world. The second part, “Literature and (Multi)Cultural Discourses,” has eight essays that examine the potential of literature to serve as a potent tool to investigate diverse cultural viewpoints. Finally, the third section “Linguistics and Education” includes six articles, that look into the influence of the Internet today and into the significance of language and education in promoting cross-cultural comprehension. While the compilation encompasses various topics and ideas, it is important to note that 6 of these essays predominantly delve into American themes. Consequently, this review will place particular emphasis on these American-focused contributions, recognizing their significance in the overall context of the book. However, it is worth acknowledging that the remaining essays also provide valuable insights that enhance the diverse range of perspectives presented in the collection.

The first section’s papers, centered on America related topics, commences with Begona Lasa-Álvarez’s scholarly work titled “Multicultural Discourses on the Connections between Native Americans and Europeans in the Long Eighteenth Century” which illuminates literary works that influenced the European perspective on the indigenous peoples of America. More precisely, Lasa-Álvarez, a lecturer of the Faculty of Education, at the University of Coruna in Spain, examines the literary work The Story of Saint-Castins by Baron of Lahontar, and its various versions based on Lahontar’s travel notes in later years such as a short narrative “Azakia: anecdote huronne” which was published in French, British, and American press in the 18th century, as well as Sarah Morton’s narrative poem Ouabi, or The Virtues of Nature, an Indian Tale in Four Cantos (1790), and a short story featured in the Bibliothéque britannique and the Biblioteca Británica. The aim is to analyze how these narratives depict the indigenous peoples of America. In fact, Lasa-Álvarez highlights the intriguing observation that these narratives exhibited a tendency to present indigenous individuals in varying manners as the stories were created as a response “to the great curiosity in Western societies about how native peoples how actually behave” (Lasa-Álvarez 27-28).

In her scholarly article titled “The Monsters Among Us, or Decentring Whiteness in Contemporary American Visual Culture: Jordan’s Peele’s Get Out,” Loredana Bercuci, a researcher at the Department of Modern Languages of the West University of Timisoara in Romania, posits that the film Get Out (2017) challenges conventional cinematic tropes by foregrounding whiteness, thereby perpetuating white privilege. Bercuci employs a Critical Whiteness Studies framework to explicate her contentions concerning the notion of whiteness and cites the film Get Out as an instance to demonstrate how whiteness “claims to lack corporeality,” as the movie depicts a split between the mind and the body (Bercuci 50). Moreover, Get Out puts its focus “on the monstrosity associated with whiteness,” and, also, it “offers a catalogue of types of whiteness and racist ideas in contemporary society […],” (Bercuci 57) that may potentially stimulate a reconsideration of existing racial prejudices not only within the United States but also on a global scale.

The second section consists of three articles that explore American themes, starting with the work of Christina Cheveresan, a Professor at the West University of Timisoara, Romania, titled “The Imposter in Jerusalem, Cultural (Re)Mappings and Re(Locations) in Operation Shylock,” in which she examines how Philip Roth, an American writer, employs a technique of “symbolic heteroglossia” (Cheveresan 88) to represent the various ways in which the issue of “Jewish mischief” (Cheveresan 88) is experienced, conceptualized, and understood in his novel, Operation Shylock (1993). Roth’s literary work sheds light on various themes, including the concept of belonging and identification with a lost home, whether it is real or fictional. Additionally, Cheveresan highlights how the author delves into the crucial matter of Jewishness, exploring its essence, the entities responsible for defining it, and the legitimacy of their entitlement to do so (Cheveresan 98). Through the construction of a narrative that incorporates non-fictional elements, Roth places a significant emphasis on the ongoing pursuit of authenticity, a process that holds prominence in the real world as well.

The article titled “Civil Rights and Identity Struggle in George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy” by P.hD. candidate in Philology at the West University of Timisoara, Raluca-Andreea Petrus examines the portrayal of alienation in Takei’s graphic novel. Petrus notes that the novel depicts the descent of Japanese Americans as “personae non gratae” in the United States, regardless of their status as immigrants or citizens born in the country (Petrus 115). Drawing upon Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and the veil of prejudice, Petrus seeks to demonstrate how Japanese American internment during World War II fundamentally altered the civil rights and identities of Japanese individuals residing in the United States. Said aim is also achieved through the graphic novel as a medium, which enables the expression of historical injustices through its characters, conveying nuanced messages intended to be deciphered by the reader (Petrus 128).

Kamila Mirasova’s essay titled “Ayn Rand in the Global World” centers on the examination of Ayn Rand, a prominent twentieth-century writer and philosopher, with the objective of establishing her relevance in the context of globalization. The author, a Ph.D holder in American literature, engages in an academic analysis by reflecting on Treasa De Loughry’s work, The Global Novel and Capitalism in Crisis: Contemporary Narratives, and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. Is there no Alternative?, while also examining some of Rand’s fictional works. The objective is to explore Rand’s relevance in the current era and to establish connections between Rand’s creative approach and the contemporary method referred to as “capitalist realism” (Mirasova, 144). According to Mirasova, Rand’s writing methodology exhibits a certain resemblance to the narrative tactics employed in the context of globalization. Therefore, the author’s work served as a source of inspiration for the world of politics, as evidenced by the utilization of the slogan “Make America Great Again” by former President Donald Trump (Mirasova, 155).

The third section of the book comprises one essay that examines a topic pertaining to the United States, which is the article of Jing Yu, a Ph.D candidate at Grevitz Graduate School of Education. In Yu’s article titled “Chinese International Students and the COVID-19 Crisis,” the author offers valuable perspectives on the prevailing Western-centric higher education landscape and the dynamics of global knowledge exchange. The study examines the experiences of Chinese international students in the United States who were subjected to various pandemic-related stereotypes in both their home country and the United States during the COVID-19 outbreak and explores how Chinese students, as cultural agents, react to stigmatized stereotypes that are influenced by culturalist and nationalistic ideologies (Yu 274-275), positing that particular aspects of educational research remain subject to Western-centric intellectual dominance over the Orient (Yu 277). Yu critiques the cultural essentialism and lack of critical analysis in current literature to reveal the persistent prevalence of Western totalizing discourse in research on higher education, and introduces the field of Chinese Discourse Studies, which presents a novel paradigmatic framework for analyzing discourse construction. Yu involved the collection of anecdotal accounts from 21 Chinese international students, detailing their experiences with power imbalances and the strategies they employed to assert their agency in the face of stigmatization (Yu 281, 289). The study’s results indicate that a majority of the students who were interviewed deal with negative comments and stereotypes by employing unique characteristics of dialects, maintaining harmony, engaging in self-criticism, and avoiding confrontation (Yu 289).

The remaining essays within the book delve into captivating and significant subjects that are equally deserving of acknowledgement. Sharon Diane King, an associate at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, challenges the conventional dichotomy between angels and demons in her article “The Face of the Other at the End of the World: The TV Series Good Omens.” Tarek Musleh, a professor of English Literature at Jadara University, explores the influence of religion in multiculturalism in his essay “Multiculturalism and Religion: Between East and West.” María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia, a full professor at the Universidade da Coruna, analyzes the impact of identity markers on George Eliot’s work in “George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Approaches to Multicultural Discourses.” Professor Gönül Bakay of Bahcesehir University examines the portrayal of "liquid life" and “liquid modernity” in Hari Kunzru’s novel Transmission. Luiza Caraivan, an Associate Professor at the Tibiscus University of Timisoara, focuses on contemporary Zimbabwean literature in her paper “Restoring Difference: Reading Zimbabwean Contemporary Literature.” Constantina Raveca Buleu, a researcher at The Sextil Puscariu Institute, discusses Gheorghe Sasarman’s novel Alfabetul distopiilor in her article “Rhetoric and Transposition: From the Utopian Monologue to the Dystopian Multicultural Approach. A Case Study.” Monica Manolachi, a senior lecturer of English and Spanish at the University of Bucarest, explores multiculturalism in Romanian literature in her article “How Multicultural is the History of Romanian Literature?” Dánie Marcelo de Jesus, an associate professor at the Federal University of Mato Grosso, and Vicente Tchalian. a Ph.D holder in Contemporary Culture Studies, analyze the discursive construction of transgender male models in pornography in their article “Transmale Models: A Discursive Analysis on Porn Ads.” Andréa Machado De Almeida Mattos and Mariana Adriele Coura, both are from the School of Languages and Linguistics, Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, delve into challenges in language teacher education in Brazil in their article “Critical Language Teacher Education: Postmemory as Resistance.” María Laura Pardo, a Principal Researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research and Professor of Discourse Analysis of the Mass Media at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Buenos Aires, contributed with a study titled “Violence and Hate Speech Against the Homeless in Social Media During the Covid-19 Pandemic” that delves into four pertinent contemporary themes, specifically violence, hate speech, extreme poverty, and the Covid-19 crisis through the examination and analysis of digital comments made by individuals towards homeless individuals in response to a report aired on the news program Telenoche. Elizabeth Woodard Smith’s work is titled “Multiculturality and Discourse Awareness in the Media,” in which Woodward-Smith, senior lecturer in English at the University of A Coruna in Spain, examines the presence of social, cultural, and historical issues in contemporary media to demonstrate how Internet users exhibit increased awareness and sensitivity towards these topics through the analyzation of recent news items from the British media by using Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Language Awareness. Finally, Denise Silva Paes Landim, a Professor at Federal University of Tocantis in Brazil, discusses the challenges and possibilities for English teachers’ agency development in the North of Brazil in her article, “Challenges and Possibilities for the Development of English Teachers’ Agency in the North of Brazil.”

The anthology of essays featured in Multicultural Discourses in Turbulent Times presents a compelling fusion of cultural studies, providing readers with a thought-provoking and inspiring exploration of the diverse perspectives and insights presented throughout the pages. Each essay serves as a distinct thread in the intricate world of multicultural discourses, leaving readers enlightened and challenged by the rich and multifaceted discourse presented within.

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