• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.7-33
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• 2023

Numerous journalistic and literary writings about the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian awardee of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913), appeared in newspapers of colonial Vietnam. His stop-over in Saigon (Cochin China) in 1929 created political discussions in contemporary journalism and other publications. Tagore and his visit to Saigon inspired Vietnamese intellectuals and stirred diverse anti-colonial thought. This paper examines writings and images about Tagore in colonial Vietnamese journals and newspapers, reconstructing how intellectuals recalled and imagined him as they also engaged with anti-colonial thought, particularly anti-colonial modernity and anti-capitalism. Contextualizing the reception of Tagore in colonial projects of modernizing the Vietnamese colony, the paper argues that discussions inspired by Tagore's visit embody contemporary nationalist ideology.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.617-628
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• 2018

The aim of this essay is to discuss the relationship between Korean literature and Korean intellectual scenes. Since its first introduction to the local context, literature as a genre has served as a field in which colonial and post-colonial intellectuals have attempted to win the accreditation of Western enlightenment. Literature has been regarded as a crucial instrument of liberal arts and education in Korea. Literature has functioned as a social movement in Korea since its inception. During the colonial period, radical intellectuals and literary writers published essays and articles in literary journals. This status as a social movement is still a distinctive characteristic of Korean literature. From the outset, Korean literature has functioned as an enlightenment project for cultural development. As such, Korean literature retains a political meaning of "literariness," which reshuffles the hierarchy of the sensible and creates novelty against given aesthetic regimes. As a result, in the process these regimes are thereby de-purified of their status as purely aesthetic movements; their perspectives thereby come into contact with other discourses and practices outside the art world. This essay argues that as a genre, Korean literature always functions as "world literature" in Korean intellectual scenes.

• Journal of East-Asian Urban History
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• v.1
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• pp.7-24
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• 2019

A. J. Toynbee published a book called Travel to China(1931) after traveling around the Asian continent in 1929. The book mostly focuses on Japan, China and the relationship between the two countries. Toynbee visited major cities in Japan and China by train. Most of the Japanese cities he saw were turning into modern cities in the process of spontaneous modernization mixed with its tradition. On the other hand, Chinese cities that he visited showed him various characteristics, including traditional, colonial, or semi-colonial cities. The modern cities of Japan and China in the late 1920s were transformed into various aspects under the influence of tradition, spontaneous modernization, colonial or anti-colonial modernization. How did Toynbee look at cities in East Asia? How did he recognize the relationship between tradition, modernization and colonization while visiting this area? Toynbee emphasizes the weight and influence of tradition especially in the development of modern cities in Japan and China. So, are modern European cities born out of their own traditions? Modern cities everywhere in the East and West were newly developed under the influence of tradition. Toynbee's attitude, which emphasizes especially its tradition in the modern cities of East Asia, seems to reflect his Orientalistic view.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.42
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• pp.107-129
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• 2016

In modern history, there have been several kinds of continental unions or supranational politico-economic unions in the world, such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Union of South American Nations, the African Union, etc. Modern thinkers proposed many pan-isms on their continental base, for example, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Latin Americanism, Pan-Asianism, Pan-Celtism, etc. What is the most common in these pan-isms is that a continental union would be a politico-economic system to overcome the limits of the modern state-nation and to realize a long and happy relationship between member nations and continents. However, the concept of a supranational union differs from that of cosmopolitanism, in that the former presupposes the common cultural and historical heritage in the concerned region or continent. Ngugi wa Thinog'o' Pan-Africanism implies two keywords that are connected to his concepts such as 'decentralization' and 'African languages.' Pan-Africanism supposes that Africa may gain benefits from the union of African nations under the umbrella of anti-colonial efforts to down size the Euro-American influences. Moreover, using African languages enhances self-reliance and self-imagination among the African people. For in the former colonial regimes, the European colonial languages, such as English, French, or Portuguese, were central to the dissemination of European culture and modernity. Ngugi asserts that the African peripheralized languages could reinstate the African cultural heritage and propose an alternative to the Western modernity.