The Center for Intercultural Dialogue began publishing a series of case studies, titled Constructing Intercultural Dialogues, in 2017, because the world needs more people to listen to one another and to think about what they share rather than quite so many people making false assumptions about others. We must work to promote social cohesion (that is, emphasizing similarities across group boundaries) rather than leaving uncontested the frequent assumption that all cultural Others have different agendas and share few of our values.
The goal of this publication series is to invite a wide range of people to tell the story of a time when intercultural dialogue occurred, providing models for those who do not frequently participate in such dialogues. Intercultural dialogue is jointly constructed by participants, requiring cooperation to engage in new and different ways of interacting. This series is designed to harvest the knowledge gained by those who have engaged in intercultural dialogues and share it publicly. As with all publications on this site, these are available for free; just click on the thumbnail to download a printable PDF. They may be downloaded, printed, and shared as is, without changes, without cost, so long as there is acknowledgment of the source. If you are interested in writing up your own experiences, send an email to the series editor, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz.
The following is a list of all case studies published to date, shown in the order in which they were published. Click on the title of the case study that interests you to see and download that PDF.
2017:
Case Study #1: Lullabies by Johanna Maccioni (creating connections across cultural boundaries through shared experiences, such as lullabies)
Case Study #2: Reconciliation by Maria Flora Mangano (on reconciliation across national boundaries through dialogue despite a history of war; also available in Italian)
Case Study #3: Intergroup Dialogue and Service Learning: Students as Facilitators by Sara DeTurk (using a senior capstone class on training and group facilitation to encourage intercultural dialogue)
Case Study #4: “America the Beautiful” by Nilanjana Bardhan (opening up to dialogue in an intercultural communication class)
Case Study #5: Intercultural Dialogue and Deaf HIV/AIDS by Leila Monaghan (examines the complications of interpreting across not only multiple cultures and multiple sign languages, but in a context of an HIV/AIDS conference)
Case Study #6: The Privilege of Listening First by Elizabeth S. Parks (what constitutes good listening within a Deaf cultural context and who gets to speak or listen first)
Case Study #7: When the East Meets the Middle East by Lauren Mark (describes the issues raised by serving as an interpreter between Israeli and Chinese teams)
Case Study #8: A Flying Miracle by Inga Milēviča (shows how the universal characteristics of fairy tales served to assist Finnish students in learning Russian)
2018:
Case Study #9: Intercultural Dialogue as an Activity of Daily Living by Maria Flora Mangano (shows how intercultural dialogue fits into our lives even in brief interactions, rather than only during formally organized events)
Case Study #10: Let’s talk about feelings in the newcomer ESOL classroom! by Luis Javier Pentón Herrera (presents results of a study of students in an English for Students of Other Languages course)
2019:
Case Study #11: Creating Connection through Intercultural Dialogue Partners by Tasha Souza (describes pairing intercultural communication students with those in ESL courses as a way to encourage “mindful dialogue across difference.”)
2021:
Case Study #12: Transcultural Education in Context by Mohammed Guamguami (describes an international collaboration within an educational setting).
2022:
Case Study #13: A Dialogue about Caste: Managing Uncomfortable Conversations by Pratha Shetty (how to manage the sorts of difficult conversations that frequently occur when members of different cultural groups interact, even when everyone has the best of intentions).
NOTE for students: As these are written by faculty members or advanced graduate students, they may be used as resources in academic papers (unless your professor in a particular course tells you otherwise). The citation format in APA for any of these published in English would be:
• Maccioni, J. (2017). Lullabies. Constructing Intercultural Dialogues, 1. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/constructing-icd-1.pdf
If you have a case study you would like to share, send an email to the series editor, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz. If you would like to translate one or more of the case studies into any language other than English, send an email about that.
There are many, many relevant publications by others, of course. As we notice these, they are added to the list of Readings in ICD posted to this website. If you would like to nominate some of your own publications, or those you are reading, to be added to the list, send an email. We occasionally publish book notes to the CID website, so if you wish to write one, let us know which book, and what you perceive as its relevance to intercultural dialogue.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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