Author: Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, the Director of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, manages this website.

CFP Chapters on Immigration Rhetoric

Clarke Rountree (University of Alabama in Huntsville) and Jouni Tilli (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) are seeking American and International scholars to contribute to a book project on immigration rhetoric. The book will focus on the rhetoric of immigration (and anti-immigration) surrounding the refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the would-be ISIS Caliphate. We want to authors for chapters that analyze the rhetoric of immigration in Europe and the United States. In particular, we’d like scholars who could write chapters on the United States, Germany, Hungary, France, Great Britain, Turkey, the European Union, and other select countries. A final chapter will offer a comparative analysis that draws upon these individual chapters.

We want each chapter to provide basic background on the political system of the country and its immigration history and policy to frame an analysis of discourse from the government and significant political players on the current immigration crisis. We want to consider how immigrants are constructed (e.g., as victims, as security risks) and what issues are tied to immigration rhetoric, such as economic, cultural, social, political, religious, humanitarian, and security issues.

We hope to recruit authors who can complete 8,000-12,000-word draft essays by the end of summer 2016.

Interested scholars should contact Clarke Rountree.

Intercultural Communication (Europe and the Islamic World) Study Abroad in France and Spain

Intercultural Communication (Europe and the Islamic World) Study Abroad in France and Spain
2 weeks: July 31 to August 13, 2016

The Department of Communication Studies at Kansas State University announces its 2016 summer seminar in France and Spain and invites applications from undergraduate and graduate students across the United States.

Admission is competitive; deadline for application is February 1, 2016.
Students may contact program director, Professor Soumia Bardhan

This 2-week summer program on culture and communication is designed for undergraduate and graduate students interested in an academic and intercultural experience in a foreign culture. The goal of this course is to enhance student intercultural competence and an understanding of the long-term intercultural interaction/ relationship between Western cultures and Islam.

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In this course, culture will be studied through four levels. These levels correspond to communications scholar Bernard Saint-Jacques’s conception of culture: (1) High culture- the achievements of society in terms of the most esteemed forms of literature, art, music; (2) Culture as behavior- the ways people agree to behave, act, and respond; (3) Culture as ways of thinking-modes of perception, beliefs and values, shaped by history, society, media, religion, politics, etc; and (4) Culture as language. Through an in-depth review of intercultural theories and concepts, and competence development activities, the course will focus on the ways in which culture and language – and more broadly communication – are linked; it will help students gain a greater understanding of when and why communicative misunderstandings occur and how to overcome them; and it will allow students to appreciate communicative differences resulting from cultural dissimilarities and recognize that interacting with people from different backgrounds brings opportunities for growth.

In addition, the course will focus on the history, evolution, and manifestation of Islam in Al-Andalus (south Spain) and the intercultural interactions between Western and Islamic cultures, as well as Christianity, Judaism, Islam in Spain and France. It will illustrate the enormous influence Islam exerted on these countries through art, religion, history, and politics. The program will also focus on the debates concerning the Muslim population in Europe, covering concepts of religion and secularism, immigration, human rights, feminism, religion and fundamentalism, and modernity.

The academic component will consist of a series of briefings from the faculty leader and other leading academic, literary and political personalities and experts on the European relationship with the Islamic World. Participants will attend daily lectures and meetings with the program director and other scholars/ experts in the fields of intercultural communication, politics, art history, history, religion, law, gender studies, linguistics, and actively engage in numerous formal and informal intercultural discussions and interactions with ordinary citizens. Study sites include: France (Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and Marseille) and Spain (Seville, Granada, Madrid, and Córdoba).

To access program description, eligibility, itinerary, tuition and associated investment, application deadlines and for more information on this academic and intercultural experience, visit Kansas State University’s Study Abroad Office.

CFP: How to Analyze Authority and Power in Interaction (Japan)

The Language and Social Interaction and Organizational Communication divisions of the International Communication Association present How to analyze authority and power in interaction
A preconference to the 2016 meeting of the International Communication Association
July 9, 2016, 9am to 5pm
Fukuoka Sea Hawk Hotel, Japan
Organized by Nicolas Bencherki, Frédérik Matte and François Cooren

Rationale
Historically, studies on language and social interaction have often been criticized for their alleged incapacity to deal with questions of power, coercion and domination (Cooren, 2007). By exclusively focusing on what people do in interactional scenes, LSI scholars have indeed been accused of being ill equipped to address and analyze what makes the interactions they study possible (Reed, 2010). In response, macro-sociologists and critical scholars keep reaffirming the key role that structures, ideologies and power relationships play in the constitution of interactions. However, they rarely analyze conversations or dialogues per se, which means that interaction studies seem often immune to this kind of consideration.

For the past twenty years, however, a growing movement of scholars has decided to go beyond the sterile opposition between agency and structure by openly analyzing everything that happens to make a difference in a given interaction (Bartesaghi, 2009, 2014, Bencherki and Cooren, 2011; Benoit-Barné and Cooren, 2009; Castor and Cooren, 2006; Chiang, 2015; Cooren and Matte, 2010; Taylor and Van Every, 2011, 2014). Instead of exclusively focusing on what people do, these scholars have also taken into account other forms of agency or authorship that seem to make a difference through people’s turns of talk.

How to participate
For this preconference, we would like to encourage scholars to submit papers that explicitly (1) deal with questions of power/authority and (2) illustrate their approach by studying the detail of the interaction that organizers selected. In other words, each participant is invited to shed his or her own original light on the same common interaction.

Any kind of perspective – Conversation Analysis (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997; Sacks & Jefferson, 1992; Sanders, 2005), Actor Network Theory (ANT) (Latour, 1986; Law, 1991), CCO (Communicative Constitution of Organization) (Benoit-Barné & Cooren, 2009; Bourgoin & Bencherki, 2015; Taylor & Van Every, 2014), Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2013; Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; van Dijk, 1993), ethnography of communication (Carbaugh & Boromisza-Habashi, 2015; Hymes, 1964; Kalou & Sadler-Smith, 2015), etc. – is welcome as long as these two requirements are met.

This preconference could be of interest to Language and Social Interaction and Organizational Communication scholars, but representatives of other divisions are, of course, also welcome.

Submit a 500-word abstracts including an analysis outline on the preconference website by 18 January.

Responses will be sent by 15 February.

The interaction: “Under whose authority?”
Kim Davis denies marriage licenses to LGBT couples. You may have heard of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky, county clerk who has defied court orders in her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She has gained quite a bit of fame, either as a hero to conservative supporters, or on the contrary in a very negative way among same-sex marriage supporters and within the LGTB community. We propose, as a common empirical material to our discussions, that participants to the preconference use their own analytical approach to analyze the following news excerpt (we apologize any advertisement that may appear at the beginning of the video). You can download the excerpt’s full transcript.

What sense would you make of this excerpt? What does the theoretical or analytical approach that you adopt reveal about what went on in Kim Davis’ office on that day? What may other perspectives be missing or leaving aside? What makes a difference, or what should we take into account, in order to explain the situation we are witnessing in the video? Is this video even enough to make any sense at all of the events? Let us know!

In addition to briefly presenting a theoretical and analytical framework, your abstract should also include a few elements or an outline of an analysis of the excerpt. Show us how this excerpt may be studied differently thanks to the concepts, tools or lenses that your framework provides.

References

Bartesaghi, M. (2009). How the therapist does authority: Six strategies for substituting client accounts in the session. Communication & Medicine, 6(1), 15-25.

Bartesaghi, M. (2014). Coordination: Examining Weather as a “Matter of Concern.” Communication Studies, 65(5), 535-557. http://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2014.957337

Bencherki, N., & Cooren, F. (2011). To have or not to be: the possessive constitution of organization. Human Relations, 64(12), 1579-1607. http://doi.org/10.1177/0018726711424227

Benoit-Barné, C., & Cooren, F. (2009). The Accomplishment of Authority Through Presentification: How Authority Is Distributed Among and Negotiated by Organizational Members. Management Communication Quarterly, 23(1), 5-31. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318909335414

Bourgoin, A., & Bencherki, N. (2015). The performance of authority in organizations. Presented at the European Group for Organization Studies, Athens, Greece.

Carbaugh, D., & Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2015). Ethnography of Communication. In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118611463.wbielsi119/abstract

Castor, T., & Cooren, F. (2006). Organizations as Hybrid forms of Life: The Implications of the Selection of Agency in Problem Formulation. Management Communication Quarterly, 19(4), 570-600. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318905284764

Chiang, S.-Y. (2015). Power and Discourse. In K. Tracy, C. Ilie, & T. Sandel (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118611463.wbielsi149/abstract

Cooren, F. (Ed.). (2007). Interacting and organizing: analyses of a management meeting. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Cooren, F., & Matte, F. (2010). For a constitutive pragmatics: Obama, Médecins Sans Frontières and the measuring stick. Pragmatics and Society, 1(1), 9-31. http://doi.org/10.1075/ps.1.1.02coo

Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Routledge.

Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258-284). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hymes, D. (1964). Introduction: Toward Ethnographies of Communication. American Anthropologist, 66(6), 1-34. http://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1964.66.suppl_3.02a00010

Kalou, Z., & Sadler-Smith, E. (2015). Using Ethnography of Communication in Organizational Research. Organizational Research Methods, 18(4), 629.

Latour, B. (1986). The Powers of Association. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 264-280). London: Routledge.

Law, J. (1991). A Sociology of monsters: essays on power, technology, and domination. New York: Routledge.

Pomerantz, A., & Fehr, B. J. (1997). Conversation Analysis: An Approach to the Study of Social Action as Sense Making Practices. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (pp. 64-91). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Reed, M. (2010). Is Communication Constitutive of Organization? Management Communication Quarterly, 24(1), 151-157. http://doi.org/10.1177/0893318909351583

Sacks, H., & Jefferson, G. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Oxford, UK?; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.

Sanders, R. E. (2005). Preface to section II: Conversation analysis. In K. L. Fitch & R. E. Sanders (Eds.), Handbook of language and social interaction (pp. 67-70). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0420/2004016806.html

Taylor, J. R., & Van Every, E. J. (2011). The situated organization: Studies in the pragmatics of communication research. New York, NY: Routledge.

Taylor, J. R., & Van Every, E. J. (2014). When Organization Fails: Why Authority Matters. New York, NY: Routledge.

van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis. Discourse & Society, 4(2), 249-283. http://doi.org/10.1177/0957926593004002006

Chinese University of Hong Kong job ad

THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
School of Journalism and Communication
Assistant/Associate Professor

Tenure-track, beginning August 2016
Applicants should have (i) a PhD degree in communication or a related field (by the time reporting for duty); (ii) strong commitment to excellence in teaching and research; and (iii) a track record of research and publication.

The appointee will teach courses in journalism and communication, particularly data journalism, big data studies and social network analysis.

Appointment will normally be made on contract basis for up to three years initially commencing August 2016, which, subject to mutual agreement, may lead to longer-term appointment or substantiation later.

Applications will be accepted until the post is filled.
To apply, click here

Postdoctoral Researcher (Germany)

Postdoctoral Researcher
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum – The Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict
Closes: 31st December 2015

Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) is one of Germany’s leading research universities. Our Research School is an international college for structured doctoral and post-doctoral research in the life sciences, natural sciences, engineering, the humanities and social sciences.

The Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (Institut für Friedenssicherungsrecht und Humanitäres Völkerrecht, IFHV) is an interdisciplinary central research institute at RUB. With its longstanding focus on and expertise in international law, the institute fosters research and teaching in the field of Humanitarian Studies, with participation from the faculties of Law, Social Science, Geosciences and Medicine.

The IFHV seeks to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher (payment according to TV-L E 13) for a full-time (39.83 hours per week) fixed term position (3 years, extension possible). The successful applicant would commence the appointment on 1 March 2016 or as soon as possible after that date.

You will work for an institute with many national and international partners. Your primary task will be to conduct research in International Law, especially Humanitarian Law and adjoining fields. In addition, you will be responsible for our peer-reviewed journal in International Humanitarian Law Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (JILPAC).

Your field of responsibility includes:
• Research in the area of International Law, especially Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law as well as related fields;
• Third party research fundraising and implementation of international research projects;
• Academic management of the peer-reviewed journal Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (JILPAC);
• Teaching (4 hours per week), in particular in the NOHA Master.

Your profile:
• A doctoral degree (or equivalent) in International Law or adjoining disciplines;
• Ability to attract competitive independent third-party research funding;
• Capacity and experience in organising and coordinating academic conferences and workshops;
• Experience and capacity in cooperation and networking with (international) external partners in practice and academia;
• Capacity for multidisciplinary and collaborative research;
• Experience in research management and academic administration is an asset;
• Capacity to teach and publish in English;
• Developed written and verbal English communication skills, good German knowledge;
• Intercultural experience and/or background in humanitarian action is preferred.

RUB is an equal-opportunity employer, and seeks to enhance a fair gender distribution in all job categories and at all levels. RUB welcomes applications from female applicants and persons with a disability.

To apply, applicants must provide a complete set of application documents (letter of motivation, curriculum vitae and a list of publications, and the names and contact details of three referees) by 31 December 2015 via email (PDF/one document). Institut für Friedenssicherungsrecht und Humanitäres Völkerrecht (IFHV), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger, Managing Director, Massenbergstraße 9 B, 44787 Bochum, Germany.

For further questions concerning the Institute or the advertisement, please contact Prof. Dr. Pierre Thielbörger or Katharina Behmer, or access our website.

8th Conference on Intercultural Communication (Wuhan, China)

Professor SHAN Bo graciously invited me to participate in the 8th Conference on Intercultural Communication, held at Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, November 20-22, 2015. Since I was unable to get to China this fall, I videotaped my paper, and sent that instead. The title is “The Influence of National Character Studies on Intercultural Communication: Moving Beyond Past Assumptions to Current Complexities.” For others who did not get to Wuhan, I’ve uploaded it to the Center for Intercultural Dialogue’s YouTube site.

My thanks to Xinya Liu, the Conference secretary, for all of her help with logistics, to Dave Adams at Royal Roads University for recording the video, and to Jingya Yang, one of my graduate students while I was at Royal Roads University, for uploading the video to a site accessible within China.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

CITP/MiLab Spring 2016 Doctoral Workshop (Vienna)

The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University and the Media Innovation Lab (MiLab) at the University of Vienna are pleased to announce our second annual Doctoral Workshop to be held April 27th to April 29th at the University of Vienna.

The workshop will be led by Nick Feamster, Professor of Computer Science and Acting Director of CITP at Princeton University, and Homero Gil de Zúñiga, who holds the Medienwandel Professorship in the Department of Communication and leads the MiLab at the University of Vienna.

The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for leading doctoral students to present their late-stage research to experts in the field, receive feedback and advice, and gain exposure to related work in other disciplines. We seek to provide a helpful, interactive experience for students, to highlight the work of rising stars in this area, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.

Participants will be selected through a competitive review process. We expect to invite about 8 doctoral students to attend. We will provide support for travel and lodging up to 500 EUR per attendee. Students are encouraged to submit dissertation relevant work; abstracts and shorter proposals will not be accepted.

Research topics should focus on the interplay between information and communication technologies and the social, political, civic, and governmental spheres. We welcome applications from doctoral students doing relevant work in any discipline, including communication studies, computer science, economics, political science, and sociology. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Citizen journalism
• Civic engagement and digital technology
• E-voting security
• Internet governance
• Open government data
• Privacy technologies for democratic ends
• Social media and political expression
• State-sponsored internet freedom programs

Submission process: Please submit your manuscript, along with your CV and full contact information, to Laura Cummings-Abdo and Meike Müller no later than February 7th, 2016.

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Dialogue about Border Crossers

Guest Posts

Guest post by Trudy Milburn: Dialogue about Border Crossers.

On November 20th, 2015, on behalf of the Center for International Dialogue, I attended a unique event at the Scandinavia House in Manhattan. The event was entitled “What border have you crossed?” and provided an introduction to a new exhibition opening at the Queens Museum the following day. The speakers were two of the main organizers of the exhibition and of the organization, Bordrs: Chrissie Faniadis and Marcus Haraldsson, both from Sweden.

Bordr Pre-event Audience

Chrissie opened the session by recounting the way their five-person group (including a third member from Sweden, another from Seattle, US and one from Delhi, India) formed a new nonprofit organization year ago at a small, red house with white borders in the south-east of Sweden. They were interested in productive ways to contribute to the growing international dialogue about migrants and borders. In many news accounts, the problem is often one of numbers, such as the millions fleeing from Syria, or hundreds of thousands of refugees entering or trying to enter various countries. Chrissie said that their group’s goal was to “put a face back on the faceless.

After about 15 minutes, Marcus came up and began to involve the approximately 100-member audience, by asking, “Has anyone every crossed a border?” and then followed up with, “has anyone not crossed a border.” Perhaps because this was New York City on a Friday night, the responses were a bit intellectual (suggesting borders were metaphors) and some, a little cheeky (one woman saw no borders in life). Marcus then explained that throughout his journalism career and recent research, that he’s come to view borders as “the atomic particle of all human stories.” Subsequently, their group defines borders quite broadly, comprised of three legs: geographic (space), mental (emotion) and time-bound.

Bordr Projection

The Queens Museum exhibition is based on five different projects throughout the world. Some people were initially lent video cameras in order to tell their own stories, unmediated by a journalist interpretation. With additional digital recordings captured on smart phones and extensive interviews with each participant, they were able to create individual maps illustrating the important border events for each person.

Marcus drew to a close by emphasizing that their goal is to help people realize the connections and commonalities, rather than differences, among all of us who cross very different borders throughout our lives. [One audience member likened this interpretation of borders as to our ability to transcend “inhibitions;” others might call these life-transitions]. The group from Bordrs’ believes that feelings and thoughts are very important to this project and both can lead to much more empathy and understanding than seems to be present today.

Despite criticisms from a couple of audience members during the Q&A, that this is a very serious issue that should not be taken lightly, my interpretation is that the organizers of Bordr are interested in moving beyond the common discourse of blame that includes oppressor and victim dichotomies that are difficult to transcend. Perhaps by focusing on personal border stories, we may feel more compassionate than helpless; we may recognize that even if today we are not crossing a border, we all cross borders at some point in time.

Even if you cannot make it to Queens, NY during their exhibition, then you can still participate by using their new app, which will enable each of us to interact with others by considering smaller, everyday borders in each person’s life. We’re all border crossers, and you can see evidence of this by going to Queens Museum or Bordrs.

Download the entire post as a PDF.

University of Warwick job ad: Center for Applied Linguistics

Professor of Applied Linguistics/English Language & Linguistics
University of Warwick – Centre for Applied Linguistics
Closes: 3rd January 2016

You will be an outstanding academic with significant international experience working in the broad field of applied linguistics, including (but not limited to) areas such as TESOL, English Language & Linguistics, Intercultural Communication, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Language Learning and Assessment. You will have an excellent record of recent, high quality publications in top-rated journals and successful experience of applying for research funding. You will be committed to the applied relevance of your research. You will lead the development and implementation of our research strategy, including REF planning, and undertake significant senior management responsibilities as well as some teaching and research supervision.

Informal enquiries: email Professor Helen Spencer-Oatey, Director of the Centre for Applied Linguistics.

Summer Communication Internships in New Zealand

(Northern) Summer Communication Internships in New Zealand

Massey University’s six week summer study abroad program for Communication, Journalism, Media Studies, Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing or related majors is worth 6-8 U.S. semester credits. The two-week National Expedition takes students across New Zealand and then in the following four weeks students are placed in internships where they work on real world problems relevant to their degrees.

National Expedition, June 13 – 25, 2016. Our exploration of Image and Identity will traverse both islands to delve into how successful the brands and images of the tourism industry are at capturing the attention of people new to the country and culture. Students explore New Zealand’s adventure capital, alpine towns and glaciers, historic settlements and the country’s geothermal playground.  Students undertake case studies examining the identity of the service-providing organizations and brands they encounter, assessing the company’s image, and identifying how effectively they appear to communicate what they offer.  Our academic staff and in-country experts provide an insider’s view of the country, culture, and organizations students canvass as they travel across the country over these two weeks.

Internship, June 26 – July 22, 2016. Interns are placed in a range of organizations across Wellington, the capital city and renowned for its arts and culture, where interns obtain rich insights into the diverse character of Wellington and the nation.  The interns’ work over these four weeks will benefit the host and the communities they serve, as well as providing the students with achievements that will bolster their resume when they return home.

Scholarship information, application materials, and an extensive list of FAQs are available online.