Intercultural Communication Institute

Diversity is all around us, even in apparently monocultural environments. Appreciating and working creatively with these “hidden” differences can enhance social relationships and energize workplaces and classrooms, reducing misunderstanding and underachievement. By means of the acute observation of the familiar, this workshop will introduce a range of approaches for increasing sensitivity to cultural difference and suggest unobtrusive strategies for expanding teaching and training opportunities.

Designed for
Teachers, trainers, student advisors, consultants, human resource professionals, international educators, and others who wish to find new methods for introducing and discussing intercultural communication concepts by using everyday experience.

Appreciate the cultural complexity and depth of everyday life and objects and to recognize the potential in such familiar situations for exploring and communicating intercultural concepts in non-academic language
Make creative use of these opportunities even in apparently monocultural environments
Generate new ideas for exploring the significance of the “ordinary” in personal and professional settings
Learn to recognize “teachable moments” for encouraging intercultural understanding
Review the contributions of social scientists and others (Edward T. Hall, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, et al.) who offer new insights into the cultural importance of the familiar

Learning Activities
This highly interactive workshop will include:

Developing and practicing a range of approaches for exploring what E.T. Hall called “the unstated rules of everyday life”
Devising innovative, effective methods for communicating intercultural concepts using familiar situations and language
Exploring the many meanings, implicit and explicit, adhering to items that participants will be invited to bring for discussion (After registration, participants will be emailed a detailed list of suggestions for this activity.)
Adding to the bank of resources presented in the workshop
Generating ways of applying workshop content to individual participants’ situations

Faculty: John Condon and Richard Harris

Dr. John Condon, part of SIIC since its founding, is a professor emeritus of communication at the University of New Mexico, and holds a lifetime title of Regents’ Professor, the university’s highest honor. He has published more than two dozen books, with translations in seven languages. Jack has lived and worked for half his professional life outside of the U.S., and values experience outside the library and classroom. Last year he initiated the Cultural Confluence Press, dedicated to share “good ideas with a modesty of words.” Jack lives in rural New Mexico with his faithful dog, Prozac.

Dr. Richard Harris, born in London, U.K., is a tenured professor in the faculty of management at Chukyo University, Japan, where he has lived for over twenty-five years. He teaches intercultural communication in Japanese at undergraduate and graduate levels and travels extensively out of personal and professional curiosity. Richard’s eclectic research interests range from the influence of physical and psychological space on intercultural encounters to the representation of ourselves and the other in media, museums, tourism, and interpersonal interaction. He has written several papers on the cultural impact of space, on the representation of cultures in Southeast Asian museums, and is the author of Paradise: A Cultural Guide, a study of cross-cultural concepts of the ideal.