http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/territories/rss Recent eScholarship items from Territories: A Trans-Cultural Journal of Regional Studies Fri, 15 May 2026 12:55:45 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99p1t8tt <p>How does food operate as a medium for informal diplomacy between individuals and nations? In what ways do citizen culinary diplomacy and individual gastrodiplomacy diverge from official or state-sponsored culinary exchanges? This article examines these questions through the experiences of two American POWs from the Korean War, Morris R. Wills and Clarence Adams, focusing on food as a site of private, people-to-people interaction. As POWs in Korea and later as foreign guests in China, Adams and Wills navigated identities suspended between official representation and personal agency, granting them unique access to Chinese diplomats and political elites. How did their trajectories evolve after returning to the United States during the Cultural Revolution? Wills attained a prestigious position at Harvard in the late 1960s, while Adams became the first African American millionaire through his ownership of a Chinese restaurant chain in the 1970s. While Wills prioritized survival—securing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99p1t8tt Mon, 5 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 He, Yanli https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0805-0750 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80c2f4q1 Review: Levine, Jill&nbsp;<em>Unfaithful. A Translator's Memoir </em>(2025) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80c2f4q1 Mon, 5 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Felman-Panagotacos, Madison https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cs404vr <p>The combination of the fields of study of gastronomy and diplomacy is generating a number of highly valuable academic works that cover multiple dimensions of knowledge and social spheres. However, the potential of gastrodiplomacy to explore conflict (or the possibility of it) has not been fully explored. This article aims to fill this gap by complementing the concept of gastrodiplomacy with that of gastrology. In this way, it aims to consider the relationship between gastronomy, diplomacy and conflict, understanding the latter as the conflict zones that emerge between communities, identities, worldviews or even different ways of understanding the value and uses of gastronomy. Based on this analysis, and assuming that gastronomy is part of every culture and, therefore, is open to a multiplicity of meanings giving rise to ambivalences, paradoxes and tensions, it will be argued that gastronomy (and gastrodiplomacy) as a tool, practice and discourse of mediation (and expansion)... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cs404vr Mon, 5 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sorondo Salazar, Dennis https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mq2s8nk <p>This case study examines how food may play a role in enhancing inter-cultural communication and collaboration through a food-related COIL project among students who are enrolled in food and nutrition courses in two different countries. Students taking a semester-long nutrition course at a university in California and students in a culinary art course in Ecuador worked in groups to complete a Food Product Analysis and Development project. The project focused on Ecuadorian food products, and most of the COIL activities involved examination of food. A qualitative evaluation revealed that food played an important role in enhancing inter-cultural communication and collaboration in different ways. First, food was an effective ice breaker and a tool for team building. Second, food also played a role in learning about culture and identifying similarities between the two cultures in a unique way. The project gave Ecuadorian students the opportunity to showcase their own culture, which... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mq2s8nk Mon, 5 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Goto, Keiko Navas, Sebastian Mead, Sally https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1mx4126v Introduction to <em>Territories</em> issue on Gastrodiplomacy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1mx4126v Mon, 5 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Rockower, Paul https://escholarship.org/uc/item/49c5c74s Editors Note https://escholarship.org/uc/item/49c5c74s Sat, 22 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Anduaga, Aitor Gaztañaga, Julieta https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hp5149w The article analyzes the ‘Basque violence’ as a case study of the transdisciplinary investigation approach of cultural narratology. The phenomenon of violence, complex in both social and psychological terms, requires symbolization and linguistic-narrative forms, tobecome a socially and culturally significant reality. Departing of this idea and starting from a reconstruction of the basic theoretical-methodological assumptions of cultural narratology, the article explores images and narratives, which represent the violent past of the Basque conflict. While the debate about the violent past associated with the activity of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) is full of controversies, there can be observed at the same time a strongpresence of the subject of violent past in literary and filmic narratives. The article reconstructs different lines of the historical interpretation of this so-called ‘boom of memory’, focusing the aesthetic, mediatic and narratological dimensions. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hp5149w Tue, 24 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Eser, Patrick https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4zt3p4wd Albeit young disciplines, Migration and Diaspora Studies are gaining momentum and presence in the post-pandemic world due to the disruptive event of the pandemic itself having a twofold effect: on the one hand, the privation of travelling and lock-down effects assured a collective awareness of autonomy and mobility; on the other, and in the process, virtual and online environments seemed to stabilize as long-haul side-effects created points-of-contact that were not considered before. Within this context, minor/small cultures also had the chance to review their practices and policies. In the case of the Basque Diaspora, the main frame that problematizes the discipline remains, namely, displacement. Yet, it seems that a “before Paul” diaspora still exists, in the term Alain Badiou uses to refer to the biblical figure of Paul the Apostle as a foundation for universalism. By erasing the differences between Jews and Gentiles, Paul—according to Badiou—overcomes the political issue of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4zt3p4wd Sun, 8 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Arranz, Iker https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8cf7q5n4 <p>This article analyses the social praxis of ‘erronka’ aiming to contribute to the promotion of a transdisciplinary perspective for Basque Studies. In the Basque setting erronkas are typically understood as challenges and defies leading to betting and gambling, associated with games, sports, and physical and ingenious endeavors. Drawing from my long-term ethnography of Basque contemporary grass-root mobilizations for rights to self-determination, I inquire about the transdisciplinary approach in the search for answers about the role erronkas play in prefiguring political projects. The article proceeds in three steps. the opening section offers a brief theoretical framework of the broader issue of Basque studies and the transdisciplinary approach. The second and third sections are oriented to adopt such an approach to organize the analytics of erronkas examining respectively erronkas in general and a particular case of political erronka by focusing on Korrika, a popular and massive... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8cf7q5n4 Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Gaztañaga, Julieta https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46x735w6 <p>This article traces the historical evolution of two disciplinary trends in the field of Basque studies in a global context. While the scholars who promoted the multidisciplinary approach espoused an ethno-historicist vision, committed to the study of Basque language and culture, they nevertheless failed to provide the field with internal coherence and defended its putative homeland roots. The Sociedad de Estudios Vascos adopted since the 1990s a more interdisciplinary vision, imposing on the field a purpose of practical application for Basque society, but paying little attention to the Basque diaspora. This article proposes a transdisciplinary approach—and “trans” perspectives in general—cultivated by social scientists in area studies, ethnic studies, and other fields that, without compromising the concerns of either trend, can help build a shared and internally coherent conceptual framework that transcends the specific perspectives of the constitutive disciplines of Basque... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46x735w6 Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Anduaga, Aitor https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1fk7k99m In this stimulating contribution to Indigenous philosophizing, Burkhart promotes the elaboration of Indigenous metaphysics and epistemology in a tradition he locates both with his mentor Vine Deloria, Jr. and in the land. Simultaneously, in an assessment spanning from Thales and Aristotle to A. N. Whitehead and Arne Naess, Burkhart identifies some limitations of Western philosophy in comparison to Indigenous philosophy, particularly when Western thinkers are hampered by the narratives of coloniality that they reiterate. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1fk7k99m Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Bladow, Kyle https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0dn7r005 Basque Studies, with reference to its transnationality, have so far faced a certain unintended limit of range: on one hand, Basque Studies outside the Basque homeland are primarily conducted in the Basque diaspora communities, and on the other hand, even if they are not, a majority of those engaged in Basque Studies at some point in time until now share a cultural or religious background of Christianity. To stretch this limit of range, the author illustrates the perception of “Basque” as an idea in modern Japan and its use as a vehicle of a travelogue by the Japanese novelist Yaeko Nogami (1885–1985) in her journey to the Basque Country in the days leading up to World War II. Then, the author argues that Nogami’s non-orientalist, realistic description and level-headed insight into the Basque Country at that epoch can undoubtedly be considered an eclectic, pluralistic contribution to transnational perspectives in the early days of Basque Studies. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0dn7r005 Sun, 1 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Hagio, Sho https://escholarship.org/uc/item/89k54194 Editor's note https://escholarship.org/uc/item/89k54194 Fri, 22 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Arranz, Iker https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69n6d1wn This piece focuses on an analysis of Guillermo Cabrera Infante's&nbsp;<em>Three Trapped Tigers</em> and the role that the author's condition of exile played in its publication history: first, the impact of Franco and censorship on the book's final published version and secondly the impact of the writer's changing political perspectives, along with the process of translation as a literary reflection of the political situation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69n6d1wn Wed, 13 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Levine, Suzanne Jill https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9f51316j Deleuze and Guattari’s 1975 text, <em>Kafka, pour une littérature mineure</em>, posited a theory concerning some groups of literary texts including those of Franz Kafka. Their theory was nevertheless highly connected to their own historical and geographical context in France, and much less so with that of Kafka who had himself previously attempted to theorize small literatures. By looking at the context of Kafka and of two other writers who might be considered as belonging to minor literary contexts, I argue that theorists of minor literature tend to view minor literature in a positive way when their own cultural context is further from nation-state building. On the other hand, those writers who are writing from inside nation-building contexts tend to emphasize minor literature’s limits on literary production. Interestingly, Milan Kundera and Eugene Ionesco who had first-hand experience of nation-building contexts, but then moved to France and wrote in French, take more nuanced... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9f51316j Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Lupas, Maria https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9b70t0pf The last decade saw the publication of more and more monographs (partially) devoted to the history of comics (and/or graphic novels) in smaller or larger geographical/cultural areas around our globe. In this article I first focus on what – if anything – (the relevant chapters in) several of these books tell their readers about the history of comics in the former Republic of Yugoslavia and its successor states, and in Bulgaria, the other Slavic country on the Balkan Peninsula. In doing so, I discuss a (‘Cold War’) misperception about East European comics. In the second part, I probe the usefulness of extending the application range of the terms ‘minor [literatures]’ and ‘ultraminor [literatures]’ to the field of comics, whereupon I put forward some suggestions on how future contributions – scholarly and other – to the cultural transmission or opening up of the history of (post-)Yugoslav and Bulgarian comics, as well as those of countries/nations/language areas with comparable traditions,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9b70t0pf Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 De Dobbeleer, Michel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9649952f <p>The Cold War era touched Spain only subtly. Because of the geopolitical situation of Europe during the second half of the 20^th century, Spain remained almost isolated from macro politics, attempting impossible alliances with Italian and German fascism. For instance, whilst the rest of the world witnesses the beginning of the Cold War in 1947 and the Space Race, Spain’s history is marked by the death of a “matador”, Manuel Laureano Rodriguez “Manolete”, who copes the newspapers’ front pages for days and is followed by popular grief and controversy. Four decades before, Miguel de Unamuno already coins this ancestral voice of the Spaniard consciousness as “casticismo” and “intrahistoria”. However, in literary terms, Iberian literature showed clear signs of modernity, and sometimes, even of hybridity. The Iron Curtain did not cover the shame of a dictatorship regime in Spain, and yet, authors like Baroja describe that atmosphere at a great extent, even, as this paper... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9649952f Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Arranz, Iker https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7wv3v7xr <p>In this paper, I propose to address the issue of transatlantic networks and the circulation of literary paradigms between Latin America and Europe. I will focus on a relevant actor from the time of the well-known and still controversial “boom” of Latin American narrative, within the context of the Cold War (Franco 2002, Sorensen 2007, Alburquerque 2010). This was a key moment in the internationalization of Latin American writers, as José Donoso underlined in <em>Historia personal del ‘boom’</em> (1972, 1983). Donoso highlighted some names that served as nodes, such as Carlos Fuentes, who played an important role, thanks to his extraordinary and natural handling of informal networks (Gras 2015). Among these names that had a specific weight in the process of international recognition of the “boom”, Donoso also highlights the figure of the Uruguayan critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal (1921–1985), to whom I will devote these pages.</p><p>&nbsp;</p> I will present a very specific—and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7wv3v7xr Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Gras, Dunia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6073c1c1 <p>The aim of this article is to argue that&nbsp;both&nbsp;“minor literature” and “small literature”&nbsp;should be readdressed&nbsp;as Michel Ragon’s “secondary zone literature”&nbsp;from three perspectives. Firstly, it will be argued that “minor and small literature” began to lose its theoretical capacity&nbsp;with the advent of globalization after the new millennium. Secondly, the problems of “minor literature” and “small literature” will be updated. “Minor literature”&nbsp;mainly has two problems: 1) &nbsp;The first feature of “minor literature”&nbsp;runs the risk of not only dismissing all literature written by minorities in “minor languages”, but also diminishing the possible meanings of the term, “minority”; and 2) The second and third characteristics of “minor literature”&nbsp;are unable to explain why only non-European arts&nbsp;are&nbsp;perceived to be political and collective. “Small literature”&nbsp;also has two problems: a) it fails to explain why countries that&nbsp;hardly... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6073c1c1 Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 HE, Yanli https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5vw2h0h8 <p>The Cold War is something I analyze in two parts.&nbsp; First, I examine its politics, including political literatures and cultures large and small that concentrate on central concerns of the Cold War. Second, I discuss small and minor literatures in the period of the Cold War in theory and practice, including examples from the Netherlands and Canada that are in the period of the Cold War but do not focus on it as its primary concern or theme.&nbsp; In these sections,&nbsp; I argue for the centrality of the tension between tyranny and liberty, individual and the group, conformity and nonconformity and related matters. The article ranges in the politics of the Cold War from the background of Marx and Mill though Churchill, Stalin,&nbsp; Truman, McCarthy to Russell, Grant and Ignatieff.&nbsp; In literature, that is the Cold War in ink,&nbsp; the essay analyzes Orwell’s essay on the nuclear bomb and his novels,&nbsp; <em>Nineteen Eighty-four</em> and <em>Animal Farm</em> as well... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5vw2h0h8 Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Hart, Jonathan Locke https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1nj20259 <p>This article focuses on Armenian literature during the Soviet period and engages with the varied responses of Armenian writers to the Soviet imperialism from its periphery, with a particular eye to poets like Hovhannes Shiraz and Eghishé Charents, who, despite the censor’s unrelenting efforts to silence national discourse and remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, sought to rekindle the Armenian sense of self. This article also attempts to highlight the poetic sensitivity and daringness of those Armenian literati, such as Derenik Demirchian, Gurgen Mahari, and Kostan Zarian, who believed it was their duty to faithfully depict the current historical moment, even in the face of its inhumanity, as under Stalin, in order to preserve and re-member their nation’s past. Although a nation with millennia of literary history, Armenian literature remains virtually unknown outside the small group of Armenian speakers within the country and in its diaspora. This article hopes to shed some... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1nj20259 Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Movsesian, Arpi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ng4t499 <p>Using the examples of two films from the late socialist era, Roman Balayan’s <em>Flights in Dream and Reality</em> (1982) and Mircea Daneliuc’s <em>Glissando </em>(1982) and following Alexei Yurchak’s description of <em>vnye </em>as “deterritorialized milieus,” I plan to show how the entirety of the cultural space of late socialism amounted to what Foucault would term a heterotopic place featuring both simultaneity and juxtaposition. Finally, by further comparing this space to that created in the nonlinear postmodern era by Sergey Loznitsa in his documentary film <em>Donbass</em>, I will attempt to show that this cultural space, and by extension, the <em>affective</em> space of socialism right down to the everyday lives of the “masses,” unlike the totalitarian universe it is nowadays made out to appear, presented the early features of the very intermediality, non-linearity, and non-topicality we are celebrating in post-meta-narrative art cinema of the early 2000s. A home-bred... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ng4t499 Wed, 1 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Tion, Lucian https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8p95w463 <p>At the close of his <em>Living in the End Times</em>, Žižek returns to a concern that theology has become (again) a touchstone of radical political activity.  Indeed, the work of socialism has always—rightly or wrongly, positively and negatively—maintained a strongly messianic-apocalyptic character in the hands of its most ardent supporters.  Žižek’s correct analysis in <em>End Times</em> is to remind his reader that such energies ought to be handled with care, because the desire (under the insistently traumatic terms of contemporary life) is that we simply reassert the moral, agential supremacy of the “big Other” who will validate and assure socialism’s success.  Such a condition leads us then to something that radical activists on the street—as an entity separate from those theorizing capitalism’s demise—might do well to call simply class consciousness.  Ever the goal of organizational energies, the best version of class consciousness (à la Žižek) exists between the self... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8p95w463 Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Hertweck, Tom https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dn812kx Despite the need to better understand the changing dynamics between the ongoing political regionalization processes and the re-scaling of nation-states, at least in Europe, updated and timely research that responds to these challenges fueled by data-driven societies and the algorithmic revolution invigorated by an uneven establishment of borders remains scant and ambiguous. Nations, regardless of the spatial boundary by which we define them, matter as much as political borders and account for algorithmic disruption. Hence, this paper explores these new cartographies from the regional studies perspective by presenting the city-region as a pivotal term amidst a wide range of challenges for cities, regions, and nation-states. The Basque Country, as a small, stateless, city-regionalized European nation, is presented as a case study, focusing on its transitional techno-political and city-regional metaphor called ‘Euskal Hiria’ (Basque City). The paper examines five standpoints in the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dn812kx Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Calzada, Igor https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sg0n7gg Spatial transformations constitute an important attempt to perpetuate a setting that becomes a stabilizing factor of human consciousness in the course of time. The understanding of spatial transformations becomes directly dependent on the prevailing balance between the unity and the multiplicity of the concepts of space, place, and territory. The paper highlights the importance of spatial transformations with respect to the EU integration undertaking and the fact that the insufficient knowledge of the inherent characteristics of territory poses a threat to the achievement of the territorial cohesion objective. This is so given that both the EU official documents and the EU adopted practices are far from the real meaning – and the achievement – of territorial cohesion. In fact, the conflict of interests and goals, through the demands of hard and soft planning, has an adverse impact on the strength of EU territory. The change of perception and the view of territory through the lens... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sg0n7gg Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Karanika, Maria Kallioras, Dimitris https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3216t9pp <p>Drawing from interviews with Cuban nationals during and shortly after the 50^th anniversary of the Castro-led revolution, this essay explores <em>Cubanidad </em>or the dynamic and constantly evolving conception that Cubans have of themselves as revolutionary subjects. It does so by first outlining a Foucauldian framework that highlights the embodied, rather than ideological, constitution of subjectivity and offering a generative method for discourse analysis that moves against the dominant currents of binary containment. Second, it tracks the production of that embodied subjectivity backward through the revolutionary rhetoric of such foundational figures as José Martí and Ernesto (Che) Guevara as well as forward into divergent self-conceptions among contemporary Cubans. The essay ends by reflecting on the possibilities and limitations that this identity poses for the normalization of Cuba within the global political and economic community.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3216t9pp Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Chaput, Catherine https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2f06w547 The journal <em>Territories: A Trans-Cultural Journal of Regional Studies </em>officially takes off with this first issue. Created in and around the idea of post-national realities that emerge around the globe, it navigates in the idea of post-foundational geographies that do not respond to ancestral and/or causal nominations, but are based in new imaginaries that reach out cultural intersections. The diverse editorial board is formed of internationally based scholars and students, with a clear interdisciplinary aim, who strive to provide with an open-access, peer-reviewed forum of discussion, with special focus on minor/small cultures that form the in-process and continuously changing new regionalities https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2f06w547 Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Arranz, Iker https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14v9183k Stemming from ecology studies, the interdisciplinary concept of resilience has been gaining significance and notoriety towards the understanding of socioeconomic systems, reverberating the prevailing feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. Emanated from the extent, the depth and the duration of the recent (i.e. erupted in years 2007-8) world-wide financial and economic crisis, the prevalence of such feelings – and thus, the emergence of the concept of resilience – is no surprise. Indeed, the crisis has exposed the highly engaged with globally footloose activities, socioeconomic systems to exogenous disturbances (shocks) and resilience is, precisely, interwoven with the capacity of socioeconomic systems to move through multiple equilibria. Particularly, under such an evolutionary perspective, resilience may point to the capacity of socioeconomic systems, not only to respond successfully to short-term disturbances, but also to sustain long-term development. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14v9183k Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Tsiapa, Maria https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11q6r30n This article deals with the political challenges that European liberal democracies confront in relation to their internal national pluralism. After analysing two analytical distortions of Western political thought –the fallacy of abstraction and the usual shortcomings of this tradition in relation to pluralism- the article presents twelve elements for a political and moral refinement of plurinational liberal democracies. These elements are linked with an analytical and normative collective dimension usually marginalized and which cannot be reduced to the individualist, universalist and stateist approach of traditional democratic liberalism and constitutionalism. Finally, the article deals with the practical solutions offered by comparative politics to try to accommodate nationally pluralist societies according to reviewed liberal-democratic patterns. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11q6r30n Fri, 2 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Requejo, Ferrán