Globalizing Intercultural Communication : A Reader

Translating Theory into Practice

Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader introduces students to intercultural communication within the global context, and equips them with the knowledge and understanding to grapple with the dynamic, interconnected and complex nature of intercultural relations in the world today. This reader is organized around foundational and contemporary themes of intercultural communication. Each of the 14 chapters pairs an original research article explicating key topics, theories, or concepts with a first-person narrative that brings the chapter content alive and invites students to develop and apply their knowledge of intercultural communication. Each chapter’s pair of readings is framed by an introduction highlighting important issues presented in the readings that are relevant to the study and practice of intercultural communication and end-of-chapter pedagogical features including key terms and discussion questions.

In addition to illuminating concepts, theories, and issues, authors/editors Kathryn Sorrells and Sachi Sekimoto focus particular attention on grounding theory in everyday experience and translating theory into practice and actions that can be taken to promote social responsibility and social justice.

Kathryn Sorrells is Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and is currently serving as Department Chair. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in intercultural communication, critical pedagogy, performance, cultural studies, and feminist theory. She combines critical/cultural studies and postcolonial perspectives to explore issues of culture, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Kathryn grew up in Georgia; has lived in different regions of the United States; has studied and worked in Brazil, Japan, Turkey and China; and has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, and parts of Latin America. The critical, social justice approach she uses to study and practice intercultural communication is informed by her experiences growing up in the South during the tumultuous and transformative civil rights movement and her subsequent participation in the antiwar; women’s; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); and labor and immigrant rights movements. Kathryn has published a variety of articles related to intercultural communication, globalization, and social justice and is co-editor along with Sachi Sekimoto of Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader (Sage, 2015). She has been instrumental in organizing a campus-wide initiative on Civil Discourse and Social Change at CSUN aimed at developing students’ capacities for civic engagement and social justice. Kathryn is a recipient of numerous national, state, and local community service awards for founding and directing Communicating Common Ground, an innovative service learning project that provided students opportunities to develop creative alternatives to intercultural conflict. Additionally, Kathryn has experience as a consultant and trainer for nonprofit, profit and educational organizations in the areas of intercultural communication and multicultural learning.

Sachi Sekimoto (PhD, University of New Mexico, 2011) is assistant professor of communication studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her research focuses on theorizing and critiquing the materiality of culture, identity, ideology, and power through critical and phenomenological perspectives. Her scholarly work has appeared in Journal of International and Intercultural Communication and Communication Quarterly, in which she developed alternative ways of theorizing identity by focusing on the phenomenological significance of spatial, temporal, and embodied experiences in intercultural and transnational contexts. She is currently writing about and researching the cultural politics of the senses, examining the social and embodied construction of sensory experiences as a source of meaning, knowledge, and production/reproduction of power. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in intercultural communication, gender and communication, communication theory, critical pedagogy, and courses related to cultural studies and globalization.