Stoian, Claudia E.
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
Speaking a foreign language implies more than knowing its vocabulary and grammar. As such, teachers of foreign languages should keep this in mind and consider also other aspects than the ones mentioned. Attention should be paid to pragmatics and cultural issues, among others. The present essay aims to highlight the importance of raising foreign lan...
Popa, Andrei-Bogdan
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
The aim of this essay is to prove that, throughout Ali Smith’s There But For The (2011), the “narrative” subjective identity (Alphen 83) accessed via the face-to-face relation (Levinas and Hand 42), as well as through storytelling itself, is liable to be turned into archivable information under the pressures of a surveillance state in which its cit...
Mitrea, Alexandra
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
The complexity of Lucian Blaga’s poetry is a matter of common knowledge. Part of this complexity is related to the elements of prosody that Blaga skilfully employs, to say nothing of the philosophical vein which infuses his writings, and which derives, understandably, from his philosophical work. Mention should also be made of the lyrical character...
Ciocoi-Pop, Ana-Blanca
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
“Air Mail” is one of the ten stories included in Jeffrey Eugenides’ latest collection of stories, Fresh Complaint. Drawing on one of the characters in his third novel, The Marriage Plot, as well as on his own experiences in India working as a volunteer alongside Mother Theresa, “Air Mail” tells the story of young (and idealistic) Mitchell Grammatic...
Ciobanu, Estella
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
This essay examines the perspectives on food, cooking and commensality offered by three highly dissimilar works: Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927), Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) and, as a cultural foil for the two British works, a Chinese film, Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000). Foo...
Stanciu, Cristina
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
This essay turns to LaDuke’s literature and activism to explore ways in which contemporary Native American writers center their work around issues of food sovereignty, environmental protection, and economic self-determination as essential platforms for community regeneration, renewal, and survival. I argue that Last Standing Woman (1997), Anishinaa...
Ciocoi-Pop, Miruna Tîrban, Emilian
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
The purpose of this essay is to capture and convey, through the use of different works of philosophy that encapsulate thoughts on the same idea, the motif of the absurdity of life in Ernest Hemingway’s first novel The Sun Also Rises. The concept of the absurd will be, first and foremost, examined through absurdist criticism of the novel, using the ...
Magrath, C. Peter
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
Stambouli, Najoua
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
The Jordanian-American novelist Laila Halaby is perceived as one of the most well-known contemporary Arab-American writers whose hyphenated identity raises questions regarding which side of the hyphen she belongs to. In this respect, one way to determine whether Halaby identifies herself as an Arab or an American is to examine how she perceives and...
Klitzing, Anke
Published in
East-West Cultural Passage
Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney is celebrated for his rich verses recalling his home in the Northern Irish countryside of County Derry. Yet while the imaginative links to nature in his poetry have already been critically explored, little attention has been paid so far to his rendering of local food and foodways. From ploughing, digging potat...
