Vivian Chen – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

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

On February 29, 2012, I presented “Intercultural weddings and the simultaneous display of multiple identities” to the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore.

My thanks to Dr. Vivian Hsueh-hua Chen for organizing the event, and to her colleagues and graduate students who showed up even though my visit fell during a break in classes. While there I had lunch with Dr. Chen and several members of her research team (Gina Cordero-Rahman and Zhou Qiongyuan), met her colleague, Dr. Brenda Chan, and received a tour of the outstanding media facilities at the School. (The photo above shows Drs. Chan, Chen, and Leeds-Hurwitz, as well as Gina and Qiongyuan. The one below shows Drs. Chen and Leeds-Hurwitz.) I walked away with lots of notes about potential connections to be made to researchers here, and look forward to continued contact in the future.