Category: Resources in ICD

Feeding the Civic Imagination

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Feeding the Civic Imagination, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, 13(1), 2024.

Special Issue editors: Do Own (Donna) Kim (University of Illinois Chicago), Sangita Shresthova (University of Southern California) and Paulina Lanz (University of Southern California).

Food is a powerful entry point into the civic imagination…

Food is a powerful entry point into the civic imagination—i.e., the capacity to imagine alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions, the social process of which fosters a shared vision for collective action. As an essential material component of human life, food exists as an extremely mundane and dynamic aspect of our everyday personal and social experiences; our relationship with food is intertwined with issues of privilege, access, representation, language, ethnicity, and the materiality of culture. This forum explores diverse intersections between food and civic imagination, with topics ranging from shared memories, local (re-)imaginations, history and civic action, and private-public translations. The forum discusses how food sustains, nourishes, and connects individuals and their communities by delving into both their presence—e.g., acquiring and preparing ingredients, cooking meals, sharing or selling foods—and absence—e.g., hunger and human waste in food ecology. Articles in this collection demonstrate that the civic imagination is not only fed in dining rooms and kitchens but also in less conventionally thought-of contexts, such as digital spaces, toilets, and forums such as ours. They urge us to engage with food in new imaginative ways, fostering and bridging conversations: one cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like, and one must explore together to navigate and actualize the imaginative possibilities.

Articles in the special issue:

U Pacific: What’s Up With Culture? Online Cultural Training Resource

Study Abroad

What’s Up With Culture? Online Cultural Training Resource, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA, USA.

This open access online course offers an opportunity to explore various aspects of intercultural communication and adjustment models to learn what is required to be effective and comfortable while going abroad and living internationally. It is designed to be part of a student’s training rather than to stand alone, but it provides a good start.

This material was developed to support and enhance a student’s ability to make successful cultural adjustments both before going overseas and upon returning home from studying abroad. It was produced primarily for traditional-aged, undergraduate US-American university students. Those preparing to participate in a study abroad program will find the first seven sections useful while those who are about to, or have, returned home from an international program can refer to the final four sections. The focus is generally on the concept of culture and how it impacts one’s ability to understand and function in a new and unfamiliar environment. It concentrates on the skills, attitudes, and behaviors which all study abroad students, regardless of their specific destination, will find useful.

Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters

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Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, Directorate General of Democracy and Human Dignity, Council of Europe.

The Autobiography is a resource designed to encourage people to think about and learn from intercultural encounters they have had either face to face or through visual media such as television, magazines, films, the Internet, etc.

There are therefore two separate but parallel tools:

And both come in two versions:

    • A Standard Version – for use by older learners and adults
    • A Version for Younger Learners – for use by children who need help from an adult in reading and writing and in thinking back over their encounter.

The focus is on intercultural encounters that have made a strong impression or had a long-lasting effect on the people who use the AIE or AIEVM. In discovering what underlies these encounters, users become more aware of their experience and reflect on their reactions, thereby developing their intercultural competences.

A self-study online course is also available for educators and youth workers who would like guidance in working with the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters.

Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other

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Special Issue: Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other, Applied Linguistics Review, 8(2-3), 2024.

Guest Editors: Magdalena Kubanyiova and Angela Creese

1 Kubanyiova, M., & Creese, A. (2024). Introduction: Applied linguistics, ethics and aesthetics of encountering the Other.

2 Beiler, I. R., & Dewilde, J. (2024). “When we use that kind of language…someone is going to jail”: Relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters.

3 Creese, A. (2024). The humanism of the other in sociolinguistic ethnography.

4 Williams, Q. (2024). Towards a sociolinguistics of in difference: Stancetaking on others.

5 Krause-Alzaidi, L.-S. (2024). Becoming response-able with a protest pacard: White under(-)standing in encounters with the Balck German Other.

6 Kubanyiova, M. (2024). (Im)possibility of ethical encounters in places of separation: Aesthetics as a quiet applied linguistics praxis.

7 Brizić, K. (2024). Unsettled hearing, responsible listening: Encounters with voice after forced migration.

Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding: A Resource for Innovators

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Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding: A Resource for Innovators by by Cynthia Sampson, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Claudia Liebler, and Diana Whitney (printed version, 2010; Taos Institute Publications WorldShare Books version, 2024). The ebook version is free to download.

Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding presents an innovative perspective on peacebuilding that breaks new ground. The theoretical frameworks are rich enough to satisfy scholars, the case studies are practical enough to engage practitioners and the tips and guides to practice are sure to inspire new and innovative work among peacebuilders. This book beautifully describes the social construction of imagined futures, inviting us, as scholar-practitioners, to move beyond ‘problem solving’ and its ethic of ‘neutrality,’ towards Appreciative Inquiry, and its ethics of narrative, voice, and meaning-making, relying on the heart-wisdom that flourishes in the context of affirmation This book powerfully delivers what it promises — a provocation to think more deeply about how we conduct our peacemaking and peacebuilding relationships. A must read for those who dare to make a difference.

Related publication: Key Concept #64: Peacebuilding by Elenie Opffer; Seeds of Dialogue.

Celebrating The Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature

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Celebrating The Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature by Edward Sampson (printed version, 2008; Taos Institute Publications WorldShare Books version, 2024). The ebook version is free to download.

In this important book, Sampson launches a new attack – this time on Western culture’s centuries-long preoccupation with a contained, individualistic, monologic Self and its fearful suppression of all that is Other – all that is experienced as different from the implicit, self-affirming white male standard.

This view, he demonstrates, focuses more on the leading protagonist and supporting cast that he has assembled to service his own interests, desires and fears, than on others as viable people in their own right. Denying the Other so as to create a world secured on behalf of the dominant groups’ interests has become an obsession driving not only the larger culture but also the human sciences, in particular psychology’s theories of human nature. Women, African-Americans and others not of the dominant classes have been constructed as serviceable Others, and appear in textbooks, journals and popular accounts as figures whose images and everyday realities have been created to serve the dominant groups’ desires.

Sampson uses the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, George Herbert Mead, and postmodern and feminist theorists to reject this dangerous obsession and to create a dialogic foundation to replace the Other-suppressing views of psychology, and indeed, of all Western culture. Sampson’s arguments are convincing, liberating, and have major implications for the human sciences and the people they claim to serve. ‘Celebrating the Other’ changes the way human nature is viewed and studied. As the author reminds us, in silencing the Other we distort our own situation and stunt our opportunities for growth – ‘no one voice can be quoted without losing the greatest opportunity of all: to converse with otherness and to learn about our own otherness in and through those conversations.’

Related publications: Key Concept #39: Otherness and the Other by Peter Praxmarer; Seeds of Dialogue, Guest post by Maria Flora Mangano.

ReDICo Hub on Digital Interculturality

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ReDICo Hub on Digital Interculturality has now opened. Germany, but online.

ReDICo stands for Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively. They have just sent a note to share:

“Finally our Hub on Digital Interculturality is ready! Here you will find resources, calls, job and collaboration opportunities and publications. Our aim with this Hub is to provide a non-commercial space in which individuals, who are passionate about research and praxis in relation to digital interculturality, can come together to share and to forge meaningful collaborations that transcend geographical boundaries. It would be great if you could take just a few minutes of your time to create a profile, free of charge, on our Hub here. By doing so, you’ll be contributing to the growth of our community.

You know, beginnings are always hard! As part of your profile setup, we encourage you to include your Zip Code if you wish to appear on the platform’s World map. This will allow others to locate and connect with you based on your location. Thank you for considering our invitation. We look forward to welcoming you to our growing community!”

Histories of the Internationalization of the Field of Communication Studies

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Lopes, M. I. V., & Fuentes-Navarro, R. (Eds.). (2023). Special issue: Histories of the internationalization of the field of communication studies. MATRIZes, 17(3).

The new issue of MATRIZes – Journal of the Graduate Program in Communication Sciences of the University of São Paulo, Brazil – has just been published, and it is available free to download. Articles are in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The topic is telling the history of how the field of communication studies has been gradually moving toward internationalization, and that seems directly relevant to the interests of many of those affiliated with this Center.

In keeping with the theme of the special issue, the international edition, with articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese is available here.

The Portuguese edition is available here.

UNESCO e-Platform on ICD

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UNESCO created an e-platform for intercultural dialogue in 2018, which recent followers may not have noticed. It is designed to be “a global collaborative hub” intended “to promote good practices  from all over the world, that enable to build bridges between people from diverse backgrounds in order to create more inclusive societies through mutual understanding and respect for diversity.”

One section presents a concepts glossary, explaining terms from intercultural dialogue to cultural identity to intercultural citizenship. These will be particularly familiar to all those who have previously read Intercultural Competences: A conceptual and operational framework from 2013, which I drafted for UNESCO (with many contributions by others named in the notes), as they all come directly from that publication.

Another section provides good practices for a wide range of topics, intended to serve as models. CID Posters and several publications (Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue and Constructing Intercultural Dialogues) have been accepted for inclusion.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Participatory ESOL Report and Podcasts

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Coole, M., et al. (2023). Participatory ESOL: Taking Stock. Working Papers in
Urban Language &
Literacies, Paper 319, and 5 podcasts.

ESOL refers to teaching English to adult speakers of other languages. Here are links to five podcasts and a report on the practitioner research project, Participatory ESOL: Taking Stock.  The project was organised by English for Action and the Hub for Education & Language Diversity (HELD) at King’s College London in collaboration with teachers from different organisations across the ESOL sector.  The report and the podcasts provide a reflective account of developments in Participatory ESOL over the last 15 years, drawing on the experiences of 11 participatory ESOL teachers, but also focus more broadly on the position of participatory ESOL in the sector as a whole, pointing forward to implications for policy and ESOL teacher education more generally.

PE [Participatory ESOL] emerges … as an approach that listens to students and engages them in dialogue, that reaches beyond traditional student-teacher roles to include critique and action on social conditions, and that maintains an explicit focus on language throughout while also questioning the hegemony of English itself.