CFP IALIC 2018 (Finland)

ConferencesInternational Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC): The “Good” Interculturalist, University of Helsinki, Finland, 29-31 August, 2018. Deadline: March 15, 2018.

The ‘good’ interculturalist yesterday, today and tomorrow: Everyday life-theory-research-policy-practice

The word ‘intercultural’ has been in use in research and practice in different parts of the world for many decades. In daily life, it is less used compared to ‘competitors’ such as multicultural or, increasingly, diversity. Interdisciplinary at heart, like all concepts, the word ‘intercultural’ is also very polysemic and politically driven.

Our interest in the notion of the ‘intercultural’ in this conference rests on the root of the word, ‘inter’, which hints at reciprocity, being located/occurring/existing between.

 This conference serves as a platform to discuss what it means to be a ‘good’ interculturalist today. We expect many and varied (discordant) voices to meet during the conference. The past and future can also be considered, in diachronic and/or synchronic perspectives. The following broad contexts, which often overlap, will be examined: everyday life, theory, research, policy and practice. The micro-contexts of (language) education, teacher education, internationalization of education, business, health care, intercultural couplehood, are of interest amongst others.

CFP Asian Diasporas

Publication OpportunitiesCall for papers: ASIAN DIASPORAS. Spring 2019 Special Issue of WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly. Priority Deadline: MARCH 1, 2018.

Guest Editors:
Lili Shi, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
Yadira Perez Hazel, University of Melbourne

Asian diasporas are gendering spaces and times that intertwine stories of race, transnationalism, citizenship, and postcoloniality. We contend that Asia is not only a geographic term but also a comparative one. It is the collective sum of heterogeneous racial, regional, transhistorical, and transnational politics that transcends bodies and identities of “Asia” across Global South and North as well as global mediascape. We also embrace an expansive notion of diaspora, one that is beyond the mere causal result of travel and migration that reifies the binary of home and settlement that subsequently “privileges the mobility of masculine subjects” (Campt, T. & Thomas, D. A., 2008, 2). We propose Asian diasporas as scattered communities, identities, and relationships that are conditioned by, while influencing and transforming, global struggles of nation, empire, postcoloniality, transnationality, and respective hegemonies.

Continue reading “CFP Asian Diasporas”

Canada-China Scholars’ Exchange Program

Study AbroadGlobal Affairs Canada and the Chinese Ministry of Education are offering short-term scholarships to Canadians wishing to study abroad in China. Scholarships are awarded for studies, research, language studies or a combination of studies and language studies at participating Chinese institutions.

  • Program name: Canada-China Scholars’ Exchange Program
  • Funding organizations: Global Affairs Canada and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China
  • Target audiences: Canadian students (college, undergraduate and graduate levels in Canada); Canadian faculty members and research staff at a post-secondary institution in Canada; Canadian mid-career professionals
  • Number of scholarships: Over 20
  • Duration: 4 to 12 months for students; and 8 weeks to 12 months for faculty members and mid-career professionals
  • Inclusions: Airfare, tuition fees, monthly living stipend, on-campus accommodation and medical insurance
  • Deadline: March 6, 2018

CFP Migration Identity & Belonging

Publication OpportunitiesThis call is for chapter proposals for a book that is under contract with Routledge, titled Migration, Identity, and Belonging: Defining Borders and Boundaries of the Homeland, edited by Kumarini Silva and Margaret Franz. Deadline for 750-word proposals: March 1, 2018.

Final selection decisions will be made by April 2018. Final essays (of 3500-5000 including references and notes) are due November 2018.

For proposal submissions or queries: Kumarini Silva, kumiATemail.unc.edu and Margaret Franz, mfranzATlive.unc.edu

The resurgence of virulent nationalism in the US and Western Europe, the expulsion of the Rohinga from Myanmar, and the perpetual containment of refugees off the coast of Christmas Island remind us that even as commodities and capital move relatively seamlessly through national boundaries, people do not. In fact, scholars ranging from Aiwha Ong, Gloria Anzaldúa, Etiènne Balibar, and Robert DeChaine, show that the boundaries and borders defining who belongs and who does not proliferate in the age of globalization although they may not coincide with national jurisdictions. This is because the border is at once material and symbolic, crystallizing how belonging is mediated by material relations of power, capital, and circuits of communication technology on the one side and representations of identity, nation, and homeland on the other. This edited collection of essays asks how these boundaries are made and sustained. How do you know when you belong to a country? What kinds of feelings, schemes of representation, media ecologies, and material conditions link body and nation? In other words, when is the nation-state a homeland? We seek chapters that attend to these questions through the prism of borders, boundaries, and borderlands.  You can direct your proposal to the general theme, or to one of the following sections:

I. Territories, Sovereignties, and Legal Geographies

II. Mediated Circuits of Belonging

III. Narrating Families, Narrating Homelands

Xenophobia vs. Intercultural Dialogue

Guest PostsXenophobia vs. Intercultural Dialogue by Anastasia A. Karakitsou

https://wronghands1.com/2016/07/01/xenophobic-world-map/
Figure 1: From Atkinson, 2016.

The Psychology of Xenophobia

The term xenophobia comes from the Greek words for foreigner/ stranger (xenos) and fear (phobia) and is pretty self-explanatory: it describes the condition where I fear anything that is foreign to me (and anything that is foreign to the likes of me). Xenophobia, analysed in its roots as the age-old “fear of the unknown”, naturally generates apprehension and anxiety in the human mind (or soul, depending on your beliefs), because fear is an all-too-powerful emotion. Evolutionarily speaking, fear has been a crucial survival tool for our ancestors, as it alerted them to the surrounding dangers by activating their fight or flight response. This is why xeno-phobia encourages social discrimination and prejudice towards a specific group labelled as “fear-inducing,” i.e., as a threat to our national identity, to our racial purity, to our law and order, etc. Spurred by powerful and primeval fear, initial discrimination and prejudice may well escalate to hatred and actual, physical violence; psychologically speaking, fear is, for the most of us, too overpowering to manage and reason with.

The question is who is in the position to label x, y, z social group as a threat.

Download the entire guest post as a PDF.

Indiana U Postdoc: Media, Development & Democracy (USA)

PostdocsMark Helmke Postdoctoral Fellowship on Media, Development, and Democracy, Indiana University Bloomington. Deadline: February 23, 2018.

The School of Global and International Studies (SGIS) at Indiana University Bloomington and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) invites applications for a 2018-2020 (July – June) Mark Helmke Postdoctoral Fellowship on Media, Development, and Democracy. We seek applicants from all disciplines and methodological backgrounds working on research that contributes to understanding how media and/or media ownership influences political outcomes. Qualified candidates are expected to have a Ph.D. in hand by date of appointment. The chosen fellow will reside at IU Bloomington with occasional travel to CIMA’s offices in Washington, D.C. as required.

The fellowship is an excellent opportunity for scholars interested to build a career at the intersection of research and policy-making. The successful candidate will be expected to teach one course per semester, and will be invited to organize a small research workshop for the purposes of facilitating publishing a special issue or edited volume related to media and democracy. The remainder of the fellow’s time will be dedicated to his or her own research agenda related to media, internet, press freedoms, and democratic institutions. The fellow will have opportunities to contribute academic and policy-oriented reports related to evaluating the health of media systems and the implications of contemporary changes to media systems for democratic politics. In addition, the fellow may be asked by CIMA from time to time to write for the CIMA blog, speak at events, and provide input into CIMA’s other research initiatives.

Gulf University for Science & Technology Job Ads: Media (Kuwait)

Job adsTwo Open-Rank Positions in Media, GULF UNIVERSITY FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Department of Mass Communication. Review of applications will continue until the positions are filled.

The Gulf University for Science and Technology is Kuwait’s first private, American-model university with approximately 3,600 students. GUST currently offers programs in the Arts and Sciences, as well as Business—including an MBA. The Department of Mass Communication and Media (MCM) invites applications for two open-rank, full-time positions. Candidates are expected to hold a PhD in a relevant field and have a demonstrated record of scholarly achievement. All instruction is in English. The teaching load is 3 sections per semester.

Position 1: Digital Media Production

The ideal candidate will have a mix of academic, professional and technical expertise in the area of digital media production. Teaching responsibilities include fundamentals of broadcasting, field production courses, visual storytelling, advanced A/V production and workflow, and mass media management. Additional skills in film, broadcasting or graphics are a major asset.

Position 2: Arab Media Specialist

Candidate sought with a background in mass media, strategic communication, or journalism with a specialization in Arab media. Teaching expectations include general mass media classes (introduction, writing, theory, etc.), as well as the development of specialized undergraduate courses in Arab media and communication studies.

What Does Peace Look Like?

Applied ICDIn a surprisingly close parallel to the Center for Intercultural Dialogue’s video competition question, What does intercultural dialogue look like?, it turns out that Everyday Peace Indicators is running a photography contest, asking What does peace look like? Please participate in their event, but remember to participate in ours as well!

“The Everyday Peace Indicators project invites you to post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pictures of everyday peace in your own life. These #everydaypeacepics would be scenes from your daily life (home, family, work, commute, college, neighbourhood). The pictures could be of a family scene that indicates serenity, or perhaps – depending on location – a defunct security installation that indicates a post-conflict situation, or anything you use in your daily life to determine that you are more or less at peace. Tag photos with the hashtag #everydaypeacepics so we can see them, and we’ll contact the finalists to send us copies of their photos to be posted on everydaypeaceindicators.org (you will retain copyright of your picture and all pictures will be acknowledged).

If you can, please add a description and location of the picture when you post it, explaining why the scene means everyday peace to you. The closing date for pictures is 1 March and the best picture – as judged by the EPI team – will win a copy of Roger Mac Ginty’s International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance book and Pamina Firchow’s forthcoming Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in the Politics of Measurement and Evaluation after War book.”

Anastasia Karakitsou Profile

ProfilesAnastasia Karakitsou was born in Athens, Greece. She has an MA in Professional Language and Intercultural Studies from the University of Leeds, UK (Distinction, 2017), and a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens, Greece (2012). She speaks Greek, English, German and Turkish.

Anastasia Karakitsou

During her 2010 Fall semester she took part in the Erasmus exchange program by attending the İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi (Turkey), where she had a first-hand experience of the problems of ‘inappropriate’ as well as the potential of ‘appropriate’ intercultural communication. Then, she fell in love with observing and studying issues of language, culture and identity.

Anastasia is interested in linguistics, more specifically in the interdisciplinary domains of sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and anthropological linguistics. She focuses on how language is strategically used to shape our thoughts and actions, e.g. through racist and xenophobic rhetoric in politics and the media, and how intercultural differences are managed, e.g. in translation. What is more, she is fascinated by how the ‘language police’ works, for instance by how certain dialects and accents are functionalized to categorize people into upper and lower social classes. Her goal is to contribute to the formation of an open and diverse society by critically thinking about and resisting the linguistic and cultural status quo.

She has actively taken part in the research project The challenges in dealing with cultural practices that differ from one’s own in the intercultural communication exchange among individuals from diverse cultures managed by the University of Leeds, UK and the University of Guanajuato, Mexico (November 2017-February 2018). She has also worked as a Research Assistant for the research project The Anthropology of Swimming: Exploring Communication, Identity and Inclusivity in British Swimming Pools (University of Leeds, UK, July 2017).

She has worked mainly in the education and translation sector: as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher, a Greek language teacher, an English language exams preparation coach, a student education service assistant, an EN>GR/GR>EN translator and proofreader.

Work for CID:

Anastasia Karakitsou wrote KC89: Xenophobia, as well as a guest post on Xenophobia vs. intercultural dialogue, and was interviewed about xenophobia. She has translated KC2: Cosmopolitanism, KC6: Intercultural Capital, KC8: Public Dialogue, KC14: Dialogue, KC15: Cultural Pluralism, KC16: Migration, KC19: Multiculturalism, KC25: Metacommunication, KC27: Globalization, KC33: Moral Conflict, KC34: World Englishes, KC38: Boundary Objects, KC40: English as a Lingua Franca, KC46: Politeness, KC51: Critical Discourse Analysis, KC52: Harmony, KC53: Conflict Management, KC54: Critical Moments, KC55: Stereotypes, KC76: Intercultural Sustainability, KC77: Negotiation and KC89: Xenophobia into Greek. She also has served as a reviewer for Greek.

CFP Communication, Ecology & Cultural Heritage (China)

Conferences4th Symposium on Communication and Public: Communication, Ecology, and Cultural Heritage, Penn Wharton China Center, Beijing, China, June 7 and 8, 2018. Deadline: February 28, 2018.

The call for submissions of paper abstracts of 800-1000 words is now open. The analysis could focus on media and communication technologies and their uses in the protection of ecology and cultural heritage or on practices of cultural heritage and environmental protection as media of communication. The symposium organizers encourage empirical studies that examine the practices and cultures of both citizens and institutions.

Submissions should be emailed by February 28, 2018. Authors will be notified of results by March 10, 2018. Organizers will cover accommodation and meals in Beijing, as well as domestic travel in China. (International travel cannot be covered.)

All papers should be written and presented in English. Selected papers will be published as a special issue in Communication and the Public.