MPA 6540G - Intercultural Communications

Credits: 4

This course will examine scholarly research and current events with concerted attention towards the improved practice of communication in intercultural, international, and public affairs settings. The primary questions investigated in the course will address the dynamics of culture, ethnicity, religion, and identity in terms of issues of representation inequality, and empowerment against the backdrop of global transition in the 21st Century. The course will pay particular attention to the ways ethnic identity influences decision-making and orientation to one’s world at the individual, community, national, and international levels. This course will closely interrogate communication practices between people of varying international and co-cultural backgrounds with an eye towards engendering intercultural communication competence. The course will call upon research from critical and functional perspectives that utilize qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry.