Since 2006, over 500 young Americans have travelled to Malaysia under the auspices of the Fulbright Program to serve as English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) in public secondary schools. Fulbright is a U.S. State Department funded educational exchange program between the U.S. and over 150 countries around the world that seeks to increase mutual understanding between Americans and the citizens of other countries. The ETA program in Malaysia, administered by a bi-national commission known as the Malaysian-American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE), is one of the largest Fulbright programs in the world and has impacted thousands of students, teachers, and ETAs in communities across the country. This compilation of essays, stories, and reflections has been written by present and former ETAs and compiled by MACEE to celebrate the breadth of experiences and depth of connections made possible by this cultural and educational exchange. This compilation of essays, stories, and reflections has been written by present and former ETAs and compiled by MACEE to celebrate the breadth of experiences and depth of connections made possible by this cultural and educational exchange.

In the fully updated Sixth Edition of Understanding Global Cultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 34 Nations, Clusters of Nations, Continents, and Diversity, authors Martin J. Gannon and Rajnandini Pillai present the cultural metaphor as a method for understanding the cultural mindsets of individual nations, clusters of nations, continents, and diversity in each nation. A cultural metaphor is any activity, phenomenon, or institution that members of a given culture consider important and with which they identify emotionally and/or cognitively, such as the Japanese garden and American football. This cultural metaphoric approach identifies three to eight unique or distinctive features of each cultural metaphor and then discusses 34 national cultures in terms of these features. The book demonstrates how metaphors are guidelines to help outsiders quickly understand what members of a culture consider important.

This collection brings together contributions from a new wave of research into language, space, and place, at the intersection of various disciplines, from geography to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. The authors investigate the myriad ways that people conceive of—and thereby describe—the world around them, studying the impact these ideas have on their identities, and highlighting the tension between conflicting ontologies of space. It is a timely and invaluable new resource for researchers and students in linguistics, geography, anthropology and communication.

In Unsettling Absences, Eric Thompson argues that urbanism is a cultural force unbound from the city and is a pervasive presence in the Malaysian countryside. Transported to rural communities, urbanism has motivated migration, transformed the social lives of rural inhabitants, and created a deep ambivalence about personal identity. This has left rural Malays feeling out of place in both the city and the village. Kuala Lumpur epitomises modernity, but rural Malays who move there are often marginalised in squatter settlements on its periphery. The kampung symbolises home and the locus of Malay identity, but schoolbooks and television have projected urbanism that marks rural life as backwards and marginal in a forward-looking nation into the kampung. The book challenges city-bound urban studies by locating urbanism in a wider world that extends outside of the city, and shows the conflicted realities of rural dwellers in an overwhelmingly urban world. As others have challenged the meaning of "modernity", Thompson challenges the meaning of "urban" while still recognising the powerful effects of an ideology of "urbanism". Unsettling Absences is a call to take seriously place-based identities and cultural geographies in a world where the urban/rural divide is dissolving in practice but in cultural terms remains as powerful as ever.

Razif dan Norjinah - waktu mencemburui kebahagiaan mereka. Konflik rumah tangga yang membadai tidak pernah surut. Razif kecewa, Norjinah ada lelaki lain. Adakah kerana dia sudah tua, maka Norjinah beralih kasih pada yang muda? Kalau begitu… dia pun mampu pasang dua! Retak seribu hati Norjinah dituduh curang oleh si suami. Kasihnya pada lelaki kedua hanya sekadar lakonan, sedangkan di hatinya cuma ada satu nama. Razif! Tapi mengapa Razif sanggup menduakannya? “Siapa yang cintakan Ji tak penting, bang. Siapa yang Ji cinta, itu yang penting.” Norseha dan Badrul – hidup mereka terus berantakan. Norseha benci dengan kelahiran Lukman. Jangankan mahu pegang, pandang pun tak sudi. Hiba hati Badrul melihat Lukman seperti yatim piatu disisih ibu sendiri. Pada Norseha, Lukman anak yang tidak dikehendaki. Berkali-kali dia minta diceraikan. Tapi, Badrul bukan dayus. Kesabarannya semata-mata kerana Lukman. “Aku sudah menghampakan dia hanya kerana mahu berkorban untuk Norseha. Sayangnya pengorbanan itu tidak mendapat penghargaan sewajarnya. Apakah aku akan lebih dihargai apabila memilih Sharifah Yasmin?”

CINTA, hadirnya memberi pelbagai reaksi, ada yang sudi menerimanya sepenuh hati, menjaga sepenuh jiwa. Ada yang membenci tanpa henti, dipandang pun tak sudi. Ada yang sedar kehadiran cinta tapi tidak mahu memperduli, dibiarkan Cinta sendiri seperti menagih kasih dari yang tak sudi. Jika tiada yang mahu menjaga Cinta biar dia sahaja yang memberi kasih, lagipun Cinta sudah lama wujud dalam hidupnya, tanpa Cinta harinya tak akan ceria, tidurnya tak akan lena. Tapi adanya Cinta juga membuatkan dia gundah, hati dan mindanya tidak sekata, mahu diikut kata hati atau minda, dia bingung kerana rahsia Cinta terlalu rapi disimpannya. Cinta memberi Ishraf rasa yang berbeza, jika dulu harinya hanya ditemani alam sepi, dia seperti hidup sendiri walau keluarga ada di sekeliling, kini dia sentiasa senyum sendiri, Cinta sentiasa ada di sisi. Tapi kerana Cinta juga dia dibohongi, terasa diri dipermainkan selama ini, kini Cinta seakan sudah mati, tiada lagi di hatinya. Khalil menerima Cinta dengan perasaan hiba dalam gembira, tidak tahu tentang kewujudan Cinta selama ini, hadirnya seperti cahaya yag menerangi hidup, kini dia miliki Cinta. Tiada apa lagi dia perlukan, hidup dan matinya hanya untuk Cinta. Cinta membuatkan dia marah, perasaan benci tidak dapat ditahan lagi, Cinta datang tidak diundang, Cinta tidak diperlukan dalam hidupnya. Sally mula mengatur langkah, Cinta perlu dihapuskan.