Abstract

This talk will engage with a number of theoretical and critical approaches to questions of mobility and transfer in cultural inquiry, with a primary focus on the era of nation-states and a look towards the post-national. The discussion will take its cues from a number of terms which have been applied to these questions (cross-cultural, intercultural, transcultural, transnational, comparative, global) and a range of theorists who have animated the discussion (including Ahmed, Appadurai, Clifford, Damrosch, Greenblatt, Mignolo). These will prompt and inform a consideration of our interpretative and critical practice as researchers who establish distinct expertise within the language(s) and culture(s) of our chosen specialisms whilst also understanding and valuing the passage of ideas, cultural products, creative practices and languages themselves between and beyond borders of nation, region, language, culture and ethnicity. The discussion will posit a practice of thinking transculturally as a core and distinctive competency of research in Modern Languages for the present and future.