Steven Darian – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Steven Darian Profile

Steven Darian is Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ.

Steven Darian

Darian’s Ph.D. is from New York University, in Applied Linguistics. He has used language as his Archimedes fulcrum, to dig into everything from science to religion. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. He has been lucky enough to have had 3 Fulbrights, and has lived, worked, and studied in 9 or 10 countries. He has written a dozen books, both scholarly and popular; the last one being The Wanderer: Travels & Adventures Beyond the Pale. The next, The Heretic’s Book of Death & Laughter: The Role of Religion in Just About Everything, is due out later this year.

Work for CID:

Steven Darian wrote a guest post, and described his Fulbright experience in Uzbekistan, 1997-1998.

Ruins by Steven Darian

Ruins: A guest post by Steven Darian.

Darian writes: “If you really want to understand another culture, you must immerse yourself in it, especially if that other culture existed long long ago. You must feel yourself into the life, even if it is from a thousand years ago.

Here are a few places I’ve been to and have tried to feel my way into the soul of: the fabled city of Gaur, where the Ganges River joins the Brahmaputra, on its journey down to Calcutta, and the famous clay soldiers of Xi’an. I’ve called the piece RUINS.”

These pieces are from Darian’s forthcoming book The Wanderer: Travels & Adventures Beyond the Pale, appearing fall 2019 and published by Linus Learning.

Read the entire excerpt.

Steven Darian Fulbright

Steven Darian, Professor emeritus at Rutgers University, has sent in a description of his Fulbright experience in Uzbekistan, 1997-1998. Details follow.

Steven Darian The Fulbright was for someone to teach courses in management at the Tashkent Institute of Finance. I had a keen cultural interest in Central Asia, but my Ph.D. was in Applied Linguistics, & most of my teaching dealt with the English language, with courses like applied linguistics, fiction, & non-fiction writing, I also taught an MBA course in business communication. In my Fulbright application, I stressed the fact that an American business professor teaching in a place like Tashkent would be faced with serious comprehension problems from his students, especially since management has its share of jargon and technical terms. I offered to prepare a book for management students who were also nonnative speakers of English. I was also lucky enough to have had a previous Fulbright, plus several other long-term overseas ESL teaching assignments (in Afghanistan, Saudi, & Indonesia). At any rate, the Fulbright came through, and I arrived in Tashkent with copies of the book (later published as English for Decision-Makers: A Course in Modern Management).