Month: January 2013

Listening across cultures

The 2013 International Listening Association Convention occurs 20-23 June, 2013 in beautiful Montréal. The convention theme, Listening: The Art, The Science, The Joie de Vivre, is intended to highlight the synergistic relationship between listening research and practice as well as the importance of effective listening to daily life.

Panel on Listening across Cultures – Request for participants – deadline Feb 1st.

When we communicate with people who participate in different ethnic, racial or culture groups, we engage in a negotiation of traits, qualities, descriptions and attributes.

This panel is inspired by and responds to the essay of Krista Ratcliffe entitled “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a ‘Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct'” This panel explores the intersections of listening theory and cross-cultural pedagogy, and seeks to expand listening theory as complicated by cultural categories including gender, racial, ethnic and other cultural constructions.

A goal of this panel is to move beyond binary oppositions between ethnic, racial and gendered spaces. In this way it is hoped that cross-cultural dialogues in the classroom and beyond might be facilitated. We postulate that it is fruitful to identify our varied simultaneous differences and commonalities, and identify metonymic echoes of larger cultural discourses we carry on as educators.  We seek to encourage focus simultaneously on communication commonalities and differences among ourselves. We seek to articulate intersections between cultures and genders to promote cross-cultural communication. Aspects of cross-cultural communication can be seen as a trope that describes how we use language and how language uses us.

This panel builds on understanding through listening by moving beyond simple categorizing of cultural identity. While we continue to divide people by appearance, language habits and cultural attributes, we can be informed by contemporary scholarship which suggests that race, gender and ethnicity are social constructions that are created and reconstructed continuously. Another challenge to cross-cultural listening is that many people belong to more than one defined group.

This panel will highlight how cultural grouping are negotiated each time people communicate. The listening aspect of conversations helps by short-circuiting stereotype fulfillment and avoids imposing expectations on people.

Seeking panel participants. Panel submissions might include but are not limited to:
* Listening across borders
* Listening between LGTBQ individuals and others
* Listening across gender
* Listening when race or ethnicity is involved

Potential contributors should send an abstract with a proposed topic for the panel to Steven Gibson at: steven.gibson.737 AT my.csun.edu

Globalizing Intercultural Communication

Call for Submissions

Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader
Editors: Kathryn Sorrells & Sachi Sekimoto
Publisher: SAGE Publications

Abstract Submission Deadline: February 12, 2013
Format: Send an extended abstract of no more than 500 words and a short list of references to sachi.sekimoto AT mnsu.edu For further inquiry, please e-mail kathryn.sorrells AT csun.edu and/or sachi.sekimoto AT mnsu.edu

Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader is a compilation of research case studies and personal narratives that complement and extend themes introduced in the textbook, Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice authored by Kathryn Sorrells (Sage Publications, 2013). This textbook re-positions the study and practice of intercultural communication within the global context and offers a critical, social justice approach to grapple with the dynamic, interconnected, and complex nature of intercultural communication in the world today. The new book, Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader, can be used as a companion volume to the existing textbook or used independently as a stand-alone resource.

We are soliciting submissions that offer in-depth analyses and exploration of the multifaceted and nuanced themes related to intercultural communication in the context of globalization. While our broad emphasis is on critical and postcolonial perspectives, authors may utilize a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of intercultural communication. We are seeking submissions that offer innovative approaches to the study and practice of intercultural communication by highlighting:
*   Globalization as the context for studying intercultural communication
*   The roles of history and power in intercultural relations
*   Multi-dimensional analysis (micro, meso and macro levels of analysis)
*   A social justice approach
*   Intercultural praxis (see Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice)

Please choose one of the following types of chapter entries for submission:
1.  A research case study that is comprised of primary, grounded, and/or historically specific research (approximately 15 pages in length). See the summary of chapters below for specific themes.
2.  A personal narrative (approximately 8-12 pages in length) that is theoretically informed and enables students to apply their knowledge of intercultural communication.  See the summary of chapters below for specific themes.

Summary of Chapters
The following list provides broad themes for each chapter.  Flexibility and innovation are encouraged as authors address topics within these general parameters.
Chapter One: The Study and Practice of Intercultural Communication
*   Research case study illustrating anthropological and critical/cultural studies  definitions of culture and highlighting the historical trajectory of the intercultural field
*   Personal narrative on intercultural praxis/intercultural competence
Chapter Two: Challenges to Intercultural Communication
*   Research case study addressing stereotypes, prejudice, ethnocentrism and inequitable relations of power
*   Personal narrative on barriers to effective intercultural communication
Chapter Three: Globalization and Intercultural Communication
*   Research case study analyzing the impact of globalization on intercultural communication
*   Personal narrative illustrating the roles of history and power in intercultural communication
Chapter Four: Identities in the Global Context
*   Research case study addressing the impact of globalization (mobility, technology, etc.) on theorizing identity
*   Personal narrative on multifaceted, complex, fluid, contested experience of identity today
Chapter Five: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality
*   Research case study on the intersectionality of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality
*   Personal narrative on race, class, gender, sexuality and nationality in context of globalization
Chapter Six: Language and Power
*   Research case study on language, politics and citizenship
*   Personal narrative on language, identity and power
Chapter Seven: Cultural Space and Intercultural Communication
*   Research case study on contested and/or hybrid intercultural spaces
*   Personal narrative on the role of place/cultural space and intercultural communication
Chapter Eight: Border Crossings and Intercultural Adaptation
*   Research case study on immigration and intercultural transitions
*   Personal narrative on intercultural adaptation
Chapter Nine: Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication
*   Research case study on popular cultural and the commodification of culture
*   Personal narrative on consuming, resisting and producing pop culture
Chapter Ten: New Media
*   Research case study on new media and intercultural communication
*   Personal narrative on the impact of new media on intercultural communication
Chapter Eleven: Intercultural Communication for Social Justice
*   Research case study on intercultural alliances for social change
*   Personal narrative on intercultural communication and social justice
Chapter Twelve: Intercultural Conflict
*   Research case study utilizing a multi-dimensional analysis of intercultural conflict
*   Personal narrative on intercultural conflict
Chapter Thirteen: Intercultural Relationships
*   Research case study on intercultural relationships, power and alliance-building
*   Personal narrative on intercultural relationships in the global context
Chapter Fourteen: Intercultural Communication in the Workplace
*   Research case study on intercultural communication in business contexts
*   Personal narrative addressing the complexities of global workplace issues

Kathryn Sorrells, Ph.D.
Professor
Communication Studies
California State University, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff Street,
Northridge, CA 91330-8257
kathryn.sorrells AT csun.edu

Sachi Sekimoto, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Minnesota State University, Mankato
230 Armstrong Hall
Mankato, MN 56001
sachi.sekimoto AT mnsu.edu

EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe

One Object – Many Visions
Launch of the EU project, EuroVision: Museums Exhibiting Europe

Augsburg/Germany – with around 2 million euros the Culture Programme of the European Union supports a museum project to be implemented between November 2012 and October 2016, coordinated by the University of Augsburg,  department of history didactics, headed by Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp. Project partners are the Université Paris-Est Créteil (France), Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Italy), the Bulgarian National History Museum in Sofia, the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon (Portugal), the National Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana (Slovenia), the art association monochrom in Vienna (Austria) as well as the Atelier Brückner in Stuttgart (Germany) headed by Prof. Dr. Uwe Brückner.

The ambitious aim of the project is to make museums more accessible in many ways: with an innovative and interdisciplinary approach developed by history didactics the project wants to re-interpret museum objects and put them into a broader context of national and transnational history. Visitors shall face objects not only on a regionally and nationally determined level of meaning, but discover transnational and European perspectives using new means of presentation, performances and possibilities for participation. At the same time the project develops creative concepts for audience development. Particularly by involving and activating the visitor, the project tries to attract the rather large number of “non-visitors” to the museums.

The concepts and ideas developed within this project will be presented and discussed on the project’s website. However, the project will not be presented to the wider public until approximately 3 years later. After the design phase the visitors to the museum can experience and examine the project’s results in the so called “Eurovision Labs.” These will be presented in each partner country in line with the motto “one object – many visions – EuroVision”.

Along with the “EuroVision Labs,” the project also implements a number of further methods which are intended to achieve the ambitious goals: During the course of the project a network of interested museums shall be established to collaborate in the long term. A scenographers’ competition adds novel synaesthetic ideas; Workshops for museum experts, cultural workers and university students are intended to implement the project’s results within the museum.

Project coordinator Prof. Susanne Popp about the launch of the project: “We are delighted that the work on the project finally starts and hope that with ‘EMEE’ we can make a contribution to a development and research of innovative museum work as well as to a productive cooperation of museum experts and educators, scenographers, cultural workers, media artists and researchers.”

For more information about ‘EMEE’ please contact:

Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp
Department of History Didactics
University of Augsburg
Universitätsstr. 10
86159 Augsburg
Email: info@emee-project.eu

EuroVision: Museums Exhibiting Europe

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