As a journal of transnational and transcultural studies, Passages regards both terms thought, but rather as terms that act as place-holders for interconnected dynamics. It regards these social, textual, political, cultural, and economic dynamics as the grounds from which the world of the twenty first century is emerging. At the same time, it is also attentive to their historical genesis, parallels and trajectories. Passages is committed to the belief that the nation-state has become exhausted as a frame of political, cultural or economic reference. Such an exhaustion manifests itself in the challenges that confront this unit from within its proclaimed boundaries as well as from without.
Passages seeks to examine all facets of the contested terrains histories, economies.
It is not committed to any program or school of thought. It does, however, encourage interdisciplinary investigation. The journal seeks to connect economic analysis to cultural awareness, political commentary to historical depth, literary analysis to contexts of textual production, and so on. The journal thus seeks to contribute to moving transnational studies beyond the confines of policy recommendations, narrow economism or grand cultural totalizations. In sum, Passages seeks to examine the role of both transnationalism and cross-cultural knowledge systems in producing social knowledge, memory, facts, histories, and dynamics of coexistence and conflict.