In answering the question 'what is special about the gene' from a literary perspective, the article suggests that if literary appreciation is often seen as a mark of human exceptionalism, knowledge of the gene may undermine this claim. Tracing some of the historical and philosophical complexities that circulate around the word 'gene', the article argues that in one sense 'the gene' plays the le...

Digital adaptations of literary works possess an ambiguous status in education. Even though they have been in use several decades, their impact on learning is not sufficiently studied. Apart from lacking technological confidence, educators are skeptical about viewing digital texts as relevant to literary discourse. In their turn, developers are not always interested in fitting the school needs ...

In the course of his short literary life, Liu Na'ou travelled across four geographical areas: Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as five cultural domains: Taiwanese, Japanese, French, English and Chinese. The transnational facet of Liu's modernist writing is not merely literary or cultural but political and historical. The earliest modernist writing in China was initiated on the basis...

This paper discusses strategies for developing students’ cross-cultural literature appreciation abilities. It aims at facilitating students’ cultural understanding of literary texts by demonstrating the current approaches of literature teaching practice. For nearly half a century, research has been conducted on learning and understanding literature from a variety of cultures. With the ever grow...