The second volume of the Off Campus: Seggau School of thought publication series has found its purpose in bringing together articles of young scholars and lecturers of international universities in order to – in the sense of the title – transgress disciplinary as well as cultural and linguistic boundaries. Transformation, transgressions, and trust are the prevailing notions that this book emphasizes on, outlining the concepts of what it means to incorporate transformative aspects into transgressive processes. The core essence of structural change, and the critical reflection of the status quo, in this sense, is based on trust. The thirteen articles in this publication, as diverse as they may seem due to their interdisciplinary character, have in common a strong emphasis on a metaphorical and actual crossing and transcending that was deliberately sought by the authors in order to highlight the volume’s theme. Their shedding light on the perspectives of trust, and what it means to initiate transformations and become aware of the liminality of concepts is expressed in fields as diverse as a literary analysis of body and place, transgressive forms of feminism, expressions of transgression through artistic interventions, linguistic heritage as a core aspect of the culturally and socially ‘liminal’ individual, the political notion of positive transgressions, and radical concepts of change and transformation in socio-economic policy-making.
The third volume of the Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought publication series has followed the drumbeat of its very title: in redefining state, society, religion, art, culture, language, and policies, as the students and lecturers of the Graz International Summer School Seggau do each year. The present volume is the result of fruitful ongoing collaboration between two institutions: the University of Graz and the University of Iaşi (Romania). One of the outcomes of this year-long collaboration was the international symposium for students and young researchers Intercultural Communication, held at the University of Iaşi between May 6th and 7th of this year, which was officially co-organized by the University of Graz. Consequently, the two events – the Graz International Summer School Seggau 2017 and the Intercultural Communication symposium – are both represented in this volume, which intends to bring together, confront, contrast, and make for a mutual completion of a multiplicity of perspectives on matters of state, society, and religion and their often radical definitions, in the 21st century, but also historically.
