Cross-Cultural Communication Studies

Professor: Huey-Rong Chen

Course Goal
From cultural imperialism, orientalism, post-modernization, cultural globalization/localization, virtual reality and communities, to the issues on the ethics of cyberspace, the contemporary issues of inter-cultural communication involved with gender/race/ethnicity, consumerism, and cultural conflicts require not only a thorough understanding of the historical/social/cultural contexts, but also the political arguments and philosophical positions behind it.

This course will introduce students the most current issues of inter-cultural communication from a sociological and communicative perspective to understand both the interactions and operations of these cultural phenomena.

Centering on cultural values, languages, identities and the uses of communication technologies, this course discuesses how, from the micro to the macro levels, the relation among individuals, social groups and different cultures have changed and their possible consequences. It is hoped that after this course, the students will have a solid theoretical training in applying what we have learned in the class to examine the contemporary issues that we have discussed in this semester.

This course is designed to achieve the following objectives for students to:

* Understand both the theoretical paradigms and phenomenon of cross-cultural communication proposed in communication and sociological theories.

* Being familiar with comtemporary issues of cross-cultural and inter-cultural communication in gender, identity, pop cultural industry, and on-line communities.

* Being able to critically evaluate the strategies and theories of cross-cultural/inter-cultural communication studies in cultural imperialism, globalization, orientalism, and neoliberalism.