COM 217(C) - Intercultural Communication

Credit(s): 3
MassTransfer Block Code: Humanities/Fine and Performing Arts
This course examines challenges and possibilities related to intercultural communication. Specifically, it provides strategies to help improve understanding of cultural differences and how to navigate the imbalance of power inherent within relationships between and among cultures. The course begins with activities aimed at getting students to identify and understand how their own cultural identity affects their communication, biases, and worldview. Moving beyond individual perceptions and personal interactions, students will investigate the ways in which racism is experienced at the individual level and is also perpetuated institutionally as a systemic issue by interrogating the role communication plays in reinforcing racist perspectives, ideas, and messages. Students will also examine the evolution and expression of racist ideology in order to understand how race is a social construct that is embedded and naturalized in communication and culture, and how those social constructs are normalized and used to justify oppression. The goal of the course is to recognize racism as a barrier to communicating effectively with individuals who have diverse cultural identities. Through a combination of critical cultural readings, focused homework assignments, interactive discussions, and a final paper that will involve a critique of power and cultural differences, students will learn how to view cultural differences through a more equitable lens and work towards removing ethnocentric and hierarchical communication practices which impede effective cultural relationships. These assignments will focus on understanding that cultural differences are inherent; but it also matters how verbal and nonverbal communication can be used to create messages and ideas about what those differences mean, and how they might be used to disrupt and challenge marginalizing discourse.

Prerequisite(s): COM 121 with a grade of C- or better; eligibility for ENG 101

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