Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

ISSN: 1528-6118

Within Communication, culture is broadly understood as a meaning-making process that evidences itself within discourse, mediated forms, and interactional instances to constitute group autonomy. Within that meaning-making process, intercultural communication considers relationships between institutions and their societies, media and their audiences, and peoples and their communities. The formalized study of intercultural communication has always been problematic; like most disciplines and subdisciplines, its usefulness and limitations emerge from the historical context in which it is studied. Developed after World War II, intercultural communication initially served as an applied area of study to train U.S. governmental and business entities for relationships beyond U.S. borders. Then, out of the struggles of the U.S. Civil Rights era, intercultural communication expanded to concern itself with relationships between differing racial and ethnic groups. By the turn of the twentieth century, some intercultural communication scholars had fully embraced studying the differential power relations between nations, communities, and individuals thus catalyzing a body of research known as critical intercultural communication. Now, heading into the middle of the twenty-first century, critical intercultural communication has come into focus as an area of study that emphasizes, explains, and seeks to resolve power relations within specific contexts, applying theories and modes of inquiry suited to contemporary issues understood within their ongoing historical dynamics. As our institutions and their societies, mediated forms and their corresponding audiences, and communities and their members continue to alter and morph, critical intercultural communication adapts to interpret and envision progressive, socially just ways forward. This series, therefore, invites scholarship that challenges status quo cultural constitutions by recognizing and problematizing hegemonic modes of belonging and being. Spanning a range of contexts, critical intercultural communication considers symbolic and performative orders across local, national, hemispheric and transnational circuits. Moreover, this series fosters interdisciplinary conversations that innovate ontological and epistemological forms, advancing a range of systematic intellectual approaches to cultural transformation and validation. The series is particularly interested in works grounded in BIPOC, decolonial, feminist, queer, crip, and/or kink perspectives that construct claims, knowledges, and theories capable of guiding society toward new social justice knowings.

45 publications

A Critical Introduction to Media and Communication Theory

The study of the media has led scholars to apply a humbling array of theories in their efforts to analyze messages, media systems, audiences and media themselves. One of the strengths of media studies has been its flexibility as it incorporates humanist and social scientific ideas in our work. This series is focused on theories, methods, schools of thought, domains of intellectual struggle, and individual thinkers whose importance to the study of the media can be reconfigured, reinvented, and refocused. Each of the specially commissioned books in the series shares a concern for the heritage of thought in the field of communication. These books provide sophisticated discussions of the relevance of particular theorists or theories, with an emphasis on reinventing communication and media studies, whether by incorporating ideas thought by some to be 'outside' the field, or by providing fresh analyses of ideas that have long been considered　central to media studies. Though theoretical in focus, the books are at all times concerned with the applicability of theory to empirical research and experience, and are designed to be accessible, yet critical, for students - undergraduates and postgraduates - and scholars.　

17 publications

New Comparative Criticism

ISSN: 2235-1809

New Comparative Criticism is dedicated to innovative research in literary and cultural studies. It invites contributions with a comparative, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary focus, including comparative studies of themes, genres, and periods, and research in the following fields: world literature, environmental humanities, literary and cultural theory, material and visual cultures, speculative fiction, reception studies, cultural history, comparative gender studies and performance studies, diasporas and migration studies, and transmediality. The series is especially interested in research that articulates and examines new developments in comparative literature, in the English-speaking world and beyond. It seeks to advance methodological reflection on comparative literature and aims to encourage critical dialogue between scholars of comparative literature at an international level. Editorial Board: Gillian Beer (University of Cambridge), Helena Buescu (University of Lisbon), Laura Caretti (University of Siena), Djelal Kadir (Penn State University), Timothy Mathews (University College London), Rosa Mucignat (King’s College London), Danielle Sands (Royal Holloway, University of London), Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary, University of London), Marina Warner (Birkbeck, University of London).

18 publications