The Legend of the White Snake represents a quintessential example of dynamic cultural narrative transformation, embodying a complex ecosystem of transmedia storytelling and landscape production. This paper explores the legend's contemporary metamorphosis through a multimodal theoretical framework, examining how traditional folklore literature navigates technological, performative, and spatial representations. It aims to extend the theoretical framework while maintaining a rigorous analytical approach to understanding literary narrative transformation.

Contemporary manifestations of the White Snake Legend demonstrate unprecedented medial fluidity. From television adaptations like the 1992 "New Legend of the White Snake" starring Zhao Yaji to diverse performative expressions including theatrical productions, animated trilogies, and short-form digital content, the narrative consistently transcends traditional representational boundaries. Drawing on theories of transmedia narrativity and landscape semiotics, this study interrogates how the legend's core characters and spatial configurations mutually produce and transform each other. The research specifically investigates three critical dimensions: 1) Intermedial Transformation: Analyzing how different media platforms (television, cinema, digital short videos, stage performances) reinterpret and reconstruct the legend's fundamental narrative structures and character archetypes. 2) Landscape Narrative: Exploring how geographical spaces like Jinshan Temple, Leifeng Pagoda, and the White Snake Love Culture Park function not merely as backdrops but as active narrative agents in the legend's contemporary reproduction. 3) Digital Mediation: Examining how new media platforms, particularly short-form video applications like TikTok, facilitate novel narrative experiences and audience engagement with the legendary narrative.

By integrating multimodality theory, performance studies and cultural semiotics, as well as analyzing systematically textual, visual, and spatial representations, the research will demonstrate how the White Snake Legend exemplifies a dynamic, adaptive cultural narrative that continuously negotiates between traditional symbolism and contemporary medial expressions. This research contributes to broader discussions about cultural heritage, intermedial storytelling, and the complex relationships between traditional narratives and emerging technological platforms. In sum, by interrogating the White Snake Legend's contemporary manifestations, we gain insights into how folklore adapts, survives, and thrives in a rapidly changing media landscape.

Two Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are among the oldest and longest poems ever written. Originally in Sanskrit, stories from the epics have endured for millennia, spawning adaptations and translations into hundreds of languages all over the world. This paper considers the how these epics continue to circulate on the internet and the political stakes of the online discourse surrounding them on transnational Hindu identity. The rehearsing and reaffirming of Hindu identity abounds in transnational digital spaces, whether through the availability of open-source translations on sites such as SacredTexts.com or debates on ethics of the epics on reddit forums such as r/Hinduism. Further, in India or its diasporas, Hindu identity is now also organized around consumer subjecthood in a global capitalist economy.

Drawing on the work of Dheepa Sundaram and Manisha Basu, I argue that the ways in which the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and their adaptations are discussed online have less to do with how the Hindus were in past and more to do with who and how they wish to be in the present and future. Whether as writers in a global literary market or as agents of political change both within and outside the Indian nation, Hindus are looking to stake their claim to cultural capital in a translocal, postnational world. However, this aspiration for cultural capital has also inaugurated a battle over the sacrality and unchangeability of “Indian culture”. An essentialized understanding of the epic is being downloaded and then debated or claimed in digital spaces such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Other Hindu or Indian social media users are expected to respond to these images in solidarity or are shamed for being “anti-national” or not respecting their “own culture”. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the epics’ and indeed, Hinduism’s future is in these digital spaces, where loyalties and devotions will be performed in new, wide-ranging, and insidious ways.

The project explores the transnational relationships between the literary fields of Russia, France, and Germany from 2018 to the present. The focus is on boundary work processes as well as the mechanisms of openness and closure within literary borders. The research is based on sociological and literary studies approaches, combining an analysis of the structural characteristics of literary fields with a detailed examination of literary texts. Special emphasis is placed on Russian literature and its interactions with French and German literature, allowing for an investigation of the forms and consequences of transnational literary exchange.

　In Japan, there is a discourse that Ono no Komachi, a poetess who lived around the 9th century, is “the most beautiful woman” in Japanese history. Komachi has even been referred to as one of the "three most beautiful women in the world," a distinction that she has shared with historical figures such as the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra the seventh (69-30 B.C.) and one of the Chinese emperor’s wives Yang Kwei-Fei (719-756).

　It is intriguing to explore the reasons why rather local character Komachi is considered the “world-class beauty”. In this presentation, I will explore the relationship between descriptions in literary works and the judgment of “beauty”.

　An examination of the discourse on the appearance of the "world's three most beautiful women" in newspaper databases reveals that after Japan's victories in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan was considered to be on par with the world's powers. The selection of “the three most beautiful women in the world” was a discourse created during the heyday of nationalism in the early 20th century. The tendency for only women to be the object of the evaluation of “beauty” is also problematic from the point of view of contemporary gender theory.

　The criteria for selecting "beauties" reflect the type of literature read in Japan at that time. Cleopatra is recognized as the representative "beauty" of the West in the translated literature of the Meiji Japan, Yang Kwei-hui was widely known in Japan through Bai Juyi's Chinese poem "Song of Everlasting Sorrow", and Komachi was a poetess whose poetry and legends were widely known.

　Although a discourse born of values more than 100 years ago, Komachi is still sometimes referred to as one of the "three most beautiful women in the world," along with Cleopatra and Yang Kwei-Fei. Even in recent Japanese games, these three have appeared.

　On the other hand, criticism has arisen that it is "wrong" to include the Japanese among the "three great beauties of the world" and that the "correct" inclusion is Helen of Troy. The appearance of Helen is a change in values due to Japan's defeat in the Pacific War, a discourse popularized in part by the screening of the Hollywood film "Helen of Troy" (1956).

　The global context in which a country finds itself, such as winning or losing a war, has an impact on the criteria for selecting a "beauty". Also having a significant impact on the criteria used to select “beautiful people” are stories that are widely known, including movies and games. By analyzing the kind of criticism that appears in "views on beauty," we can gain an understanding of nationalism in contemporary Japan.