On October 14, 2014 I presented “Intercultural Weddings and the Simultaneous Display of Multiple Identities” and on October 21, “Ambiguity as a Solution to the “Problem” of Intercultural Weddings,” both for Royal Roads University, located in Victoria, BC, Canada. The first talk was to the on-campus students in their Master of Arts in International and Intercultural Communication (MAIIC), as well as a group of visiting students from China, while the second was to the online students in MAIIC, present for their brief campus residency. RRU has the only masters program for intercultural communication in Canada, so this was a particularly appropriate campus for me to visit.
My thanks to all concerned: Dr. Matthew Heinz, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences, as well as a professor in the School of Communication and Culture and an intercultural communication scholar; Dr. Juana Du, director of the on-campus MAIIC; Dr. Zhenyi Li, director of the online MAIIC and founder of the degree; and Dr. Julia Jahansoozi, one of the faculty members in the program. In the near future, I will be posting researcher profiles as department members have time to send me information. In the meantime, it was fascinating to discover that I know scholars in common with all four as a result of my travels over the last few years, from the US, Hong Kong, Finland, and Estonia!
A few of the students will be completing various projects for CID over the next few months, and will have profiles posted for them as well. Their efforts will result in an expanded set of databases on intercultural topics, and better visual designs for the materials the CID produces.
RRU is housed on a particularly beautiful campus, including Hatley Castle (widely recognizable even to me as the site of the X-men films as well as other films and tv shows), a traditional Japanese garden, and peacocks wandering freely across the grounds. A few photos are included in this post of not only one of the talks but also the campus.
Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 