Category: Director’s activities

These fictions we call disciplines

An article growing out of research started as a Fellow at the Collegium de Lyon in 2009 has just been published:

Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2012). These fictions we call disciplines. Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Electronique de Communication, 22(3-4). Available from: http://www.cios.org/www/ejcmain.htm

Abstract: Accepting that disciplines are social constructions implies expanding current practice in four directions: incorporating disciplinary history, cognate disciplines, international variations, and rival subdisciplines. Intercultural Communication serves as a concrete case study for how these implications play out. Consideration of the broader impact of these issues on the future of social construction research leads to concluding discussion of the characteristics required of more adequately prepared scholars.

Here’s a quote relevant to my work with the Center for Intercultural Dialogue:

“There can be no more literal form of alien knowledge than that produced by foreign scholars. Their research agendas have different histories, so they have developed different traditions of investigation, whether methods, theories, or topics. One result is that foreign research can be difficult to understand, requiring time and effort spent developing familiarity with the vocabulary used and assumptions made. Yet the result repays the time and effort: just as looking at the past reveals paths not taken, so does looking at research conducted in other countries.”

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

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Institute Français de l’Education 2

I returned to the Institute Français de l’Education for September and October of 2012. IFE is one part of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. My primary project here is to document College for Kids, a program found across the United States, for the French. I have several other projects as a result of prior connections with scholars here, and will add notes about my progress over the next few months to this page…

… I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to add much in the way of notes about what I’m doing. Most of my time the first month was spent reviewing book proofs for the book I was working on while at IFE last year, Learning Matters: The Transformation of US Higher Education. It’s co-authored with a former UW-Parkside colleague, Peter Hoff, who went on to become President of the University of Maine… It was published at the end of October, with a description, quotes, and further details provided here.

September 24, 2012: I participated in a meeting of the Comité Scientifique, La pédagogie universitaire à l’heure du numérique: Questionnement et éclairages et recherche  [Scientific Committee, University pedagogy in the digital age: Questions and research clarifications], at IFE.

September 27, 2012: I participated in the colloquium launching the new Michel Serres Institute for Resources and Public Goods. I’m one of the Founding members by virtue of sporadically helping them think about how to manage interdisciplinary, international and intercultural conversations.

October 2, 2012: I gave a talk about my project at IFE this year, entitled “Iterations: An Examination of Learning within a College for Kids course,” to the ICAR lab here, which stands for Interactions, Corpus, Apprentissages, Représentations. Very receptive group with lots of good questions after.

October 15, 2012: I gave a talk entitled “College for Kids = Hands-on Activities for Students, Professional Development for Teachers” for the Fondation La main à la pâte, in Paris, France, described in further detail here.

October 17-19, 2012: I participated in Journées ViSA [Vidéos des situations d’enseignement et d’apprentissage, or Videotapes of teaching and learning contexts], as a member of the Conseil Scientifique [Scientific Council], which was held at the Université Bordeaux Segalen, in Bordeaux, France. This is a research team I’ve been connected to for the past 4 years, and this was my 5th (and last) meeting with them. It has been a pleasure working with all of you!

October 25, 2012: I presented “Best practices: How the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning solves the problems offered by today’s students” as part of the Colloque “Le métier d’enseignant aujourd’hui et demain” [Colloquium on the Teaching Profession Today and Tomorrow] at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

IFE logo

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Director, Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Ethnography of Comm conference 2012

The “Ethnography of Communication: Ways Forward” conference was held June 10-14, 2012, at Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Jay Leighter was the conference organizer, together with Dr. Donal Carbaugh; the National Communication Association sponsored the event as one of its summer conferences (along with funding from several parts of Creighton University).

I presented a paper co-authored with Dr. Patricia Lambert, of the Institut Français de l’Éducation in Lyon, entitled “A Prophet Abroad? The Impact of Hymes’ Notion of Communicative Competence in France and French-speaking Switzerland.” In addition, I was invited to participate in two roundtable discussions, one on “Ethnography of Communication Theory and Methodology: Taking Stock and Ways Forward” and the other “Ways Forward: Institutes, Centers, and Affiliations.” In the latter, I was invited to present a description of this Center, which resulted in many new “likes” to the Center’s facebook page.

Many of those participating in the conference are included in the following photo (though certainly several critical people are missing, including Dr. Gerry Philipsen and Dr. Donal Carbaugh).

One of the pleasures of the conference for me was the presence of so many of those involved in the NCA Summer Conference on Intercultural Dialogue, held in Istanbul in 2009, which led to the creation of this Center. This included several from the organizing committee (Drs. Tamar Katriel, Donal Carbaugh, Kristine Fitch Muñoz, and Saskia Witteborn), one of the guest speakers (Lisa Rudnick) and several of the participants (Drs. Todd Sandel, Chuck Braithwaite, Evelyn Ho, Eric Morgan, and Tabitha Hart). Another was catching up with Dr. Susan Poulsen, who organized “Ways of Speaking, Ways of Knowing: Ethnography of Communication” in Portland in 1992, the predecessor conference to this one in terms of topic. Other joys of the week included having time to connect with people I had not seen in a long time, previously only had met through correspondence, or students of my colleagues who I did not know at all.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

ICA 2012

The International Communication Association convention was held from May 23-28, 2012, in Phoenix, AZ. I presented a paper co-authored with Yves Winkin, of the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon entitled “Walk Like a Local: Pedestrian Behavior in the US, France, and China” to the Urban Communication Foundation Preconference.

(Thanks to Casey Lum for both organizing the event, and for the photo of me at the Seminar.) I also served as respondent to a panel entitled “Narrative and Community in Intractable Conflicts.” In addition, the Language and Social Interaction Division honored me with a panel entitled ” Constructing Communities of Scholars: Celebrating the Work of Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz” (thanks to Theresa Castor for organizing the event, and to Liliana Castañeda Rossmann, Teri Harrison, Beth Haslett and Saskia Witteborn for participating).

We continued the tradition of holding a mini-meeting of those members of the Advisory Board of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue who were present at a conference (this time it was Donal Carbaugh and Michael Haley) along with the past and current Presidents of our parent organization, the Council of Communication Associations (Patrice Buzzanell and Linda Steiner).

While at ICA I connected with many international scholars, including some of those I had met or visited during the last year or two of travels: Simon Harrison (met in France, now based in Germany), Ifat Maoz (Israel), Saskia Witteborn (Hong Kong), Vivian Chen (Singapore), and Carla Ganito (Portugal).

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

University of Coimbra

On May 7, 2012 I presented a talk entitled “From Generation to Generation: Maintaining Cultural Identity Over Time” to Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES) da Universidade de Coimbra, in Coimbra, Portugal. One of the uncommon aspects of CES is the way it combines multiple disciplines, including sociology, economics, law, anthropology, history, literature, international relations, geography, architecture, geographers, engineering, biology and medicine. Of course not all of these were represented in my audience, but I was delighted to discover two architects in the group.

The University of Coimbra is one of the oldest universities in the world. Visitors are not allowed to take photographs in the library, but it alone is worth the trip. Here is the main square, and the tower, visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

My thanks to Dr. Nancy Duxbury, a Canadian scholar currently based at CES, for the invitation, and for organizing the talk as well as dinner afterwards. I met Nancy several years ago at a UNESCO meeting in Paris, and it was a pleasure to connect again. Nancy’s recent research has focused on cultural sustainability and approaches to linking culture and sustainability in community planning initiatives.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

University of Lisbon

On May 3, 2012, I gave a talk entitled “The history of intercultural communication in the United States” to the Grupo de Estudos em Comunicação, Ciência e Tecnologia, which is part of the Instituto Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Prof. José Luis Garcia directs this group, and so was my official host, although I owe thanks to Dr. Filipa Gonçalves Subtil for organizing the event as well as an excellent dinner afterwards. As a result of the seminar, I had the chance to talk with other scholars there, including Dr. Alexandra Dias Santos (also affiliated with the University of Lisbon), Dr. Carla Ganito (of the Catholic University of Lisbon), and Dr. Rosário Durão, the editor of Connexions: International Professional Communications Journal.

And since we spent the weekend in Lisbon, there was also time to do some sightseeing, including the Discoveries Monument shown below, documenting the 500th anniversary of Prince Henry the Navigator.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz Fulbright

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
University of Wisconsin-Parkside

Fulbright Senior Specialist to Portugal

One thing leads to another. This is the story of how I became a Fulbright Specialist in Portugal.

In May 2010 I retired from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. In fall 2010 I applied to the Fulbright Specialist Program, and was approved in spring 2011. This program funds 2 to 6 week visits in 2 countries during a period of 5 years, including airfare and a daily stipend (host institutions cover room and board and in-country travel if it is necessary). In September 2011, while at a conference in Paris, a colleague found out I would be traveling to Portugal for pleasure. He provided an email  introduction to a scholar there with overlapping interests, with the result that I was asked to give two talks at the Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra in November. There was a good fit between my project in France at that time (describing US higher education pedagogy) and the needs of a new teaching center at IPC, so I was asked to return for a longer visit. My host, Dr. Susana Gonçalves, is the director of the new center, Centro de Inovação e Estudo da Pedagogia no Ensino Superior (CINEP). She completed the necessary paperwork, and in spring 2012 the request was approved by both Portugal and the US State Department.

I spent 6 weeks at IPC across April and May 2012, working with the director and staff to determine what information is most relevant to their needs, presenting multiple workshops at the difference schools making up the university, and meeting individually and in small groups with faculty on a variety of pedagogical matters. Workshops included: “The transformation of higher education: Lessons from the US and implications for Portugal,” “Best practices in blended delivery,” “Active learning: Hands-on practice,” “The impact of student-centered learning for curricular design,” and “How to write exams so students need to come to class.”

Groups included one from the Engineering school interested in math pedagogy, and one from the Education school interested in reflective practice for preschool teachers. Individual consultations ranged even more widely, from very specific questions on a particular pedagogical technique, to more general questions about common academic concerns, including student motivation and integration of technology into courses. I was also invited to speak to students enrolled in a Master’s level course on marketing.

While in Coimbra, I was invited to present several talks on my research at the University of Coimbra and the University of Lisbon. I also met with the company members of Project Llull, which uses theatre to start intercultural dialogues.

In addition, I was able to connect some of the people I met through these various contexts with colleagues in the US or elsewhere having similar research, teaching, or administrative interests.

***Update: Publication resulting from this Fulbright

Central China Normal University

On March 28, 2012, I presented a talk entitled “From Generation to Generation: Maintaining Cultural Identity over Time” to the School of Foreign Languages, part of the Central China Normal University, in Wuhan, China.

My thanks to Zongping Xiang (Eudora), a faculty member in the Department of English, who invited me and made all of the arrangements, including dinner with several of the faculty afterwards. My thanks to Prof. Hua Xianfa, Chair of the Department of English, who was able to attend, and my apologies that we did not think to take the photograph until after he had left.

Profs Shu Baimei and Leeds-Hurwitz, Ms. Yu Bo and Zongping Xiang

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Wuhan University 2012

On March 26, 2012, I presented a talk entitled “Interactional resources for the “problem” of intercultural communication” at Wuhan University, in Wuhan, China. Last year when I was in China, I was invited to return in order to visit Wuhan, which I was able to do this year, and I found it a delightful city and campus. I owe great thanks to my host, Prof. SHAN Bo, the Associate Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, and also Director of the Research Center for Intercultural Communication, at Wuhan University, for the invitation, and for organizing all of the events. Dr. LIU Xue served as my contact for logistics, and was of great help, whatever was needed.

Prof Leeds-Hurwitz, Liu Xinya, Prof Shan, Liu Harrison, and Dr. Xin Jing, and Liu Xue (standing)

There were multiple lunches, dinners, and conversations with various combinations of faculty and graduate students over the week I was at Wuhan, as well as an entire afternoon spent sorting out areas of overlapping interests with Prof. Shan. Some of the other faculty members I met are shown below.

Li Jiali, Xiao Jun, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Si Jingxin

I was lucky enough to be in Wuhan for sakura (the cherry blossoms). They are a major tourist attraction, and the campus was full of visitors during that week.

Profs. Shan and Leeds-Hurwitz

I was assigned two graduate student guide/translators, LIU Xinya (Cynthia) and Harrison LIU, pictured below at the Yellow Crane tower which we visited, among other sites. The Hubei provincial museum was also quite impressive.

I look forward to continued connections of several types with Wuhan in the future.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Beijing International Studies University 2012

From March 11-23, 2012, I took on the role of visiting professor at the School of English of the Beijing International Studies University, in China. (In China, intercultural communication is often viewed as an extension of foreign language training in order to ensure that students achieve intercultural communicative competence.

As part of my responsibilities there, I taught a graduate seminar on research methods, and also delivered several presentations.

On March 13 and 16, I presented on the topic of “The Social Construction of Identity.” On March 20, the topic was “The History of Intercultural Communication in the United States.

On March 21, I participated in a workshop on “Training for Intercultural Competence in the United States; Prof. JIANG Fei, Director of the Department of Communication, and also Director of the Center for World Media Studies, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was the respondent. He and his wife, Dr. Viola Kuo HUANG, introduced my husband and me to a new form of Chinese buffet one evening.

My sincere thanks to Dr. HONG Liang, Associate Dean of the School of English and an intercultural communication scholar, for inviting me, organizing all of the events, including multiple meals with faculty and graduate students, and ensuring the success of the visit. Dr. GU Guoping (Gordon), from the American Studies department, helped with logistics ahead of time, and offered the official welcome when I arrived. Dr. David YU, Chair of the Department of Intercultural Communication, met with me over several days, and then provided the official farewell when I left. Dr. Ivory Juan ZHANG of the same department, participated in several events. Dr. Belinda Zou of the School of International Education not only attended most of the graduate seminar and the other lectures, but also volunteered to play tour guide and showed off parts of Beijing I had not yet visited.

Lu Qinsha (Emily), a master’s level student studying intercultural communication, was my guide and translator for the entire visit. To Emily and all of the other students, I hope you learned enough about research methods to have an easier time preparing your masters’ theses! To the faculty members, I look forward to continuing the connection in the future.

While in Beijing, although it was spring, there was one cold night, and it snowed. This was the view from the campus hotel (from the 18th floor) of the campus. The next morning students were having snowball fights!

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue