Supercriticality and Intercultural Dialogue

This book offers a snapshot of interculturality as a complex, unstable and highly political object of research and education when it locates at the centre of multifaceted dialogues between teachers and students; students and students; teachers, students, scholars and readers. The context of the book is a Chinese course on intercultural communication education where students engage with local and international teachers. By listening to the intriguing and stimulating voices of these students in dialogue with the teachers, the reader also has the opportunity to enter the intercultural world of Chinese youth, beyond stereotypes. The unique approach proposed in the book is of interest to students, teachers of intercultural communication education, teacher educators, researchers and anyone wishing to build up supercriticality in relation to the fascinating notion of interculturality.

The book contains 15 chapters and revolves around five main dialogues between the students and their teachers. Following each dialogue, the floor is given to the students to react to the dialogues and to share their views on questions that emerged from the main dialogues. The book conveys the authors’ excitement about approaching interculturality in supercritical ways, engaging in the process with multiple voices.

Fred Dervin is Professor of Multicultural Education at the University of Helsinki (Finland). He specializes in intercultural communication education, the sociology of multiculturalism and international mobilities in education and has widely published in different languages on identity, interculturality and mobility/migration. His latest publications include: (2022) Interculturality in Fragments. A Reflexive Approach; (2022) The Paradoxes of Interculturality. A Toolbox of Out-of-the-Box Ideas for intercultural Communication Education; (2023, with H. R’boul) Through the Looking-Glass of Interculturality. Autocritiques. Exploring the politics of interculturality within and beyond the ’canon’ of intercultural communication education research has been one of Dervin’s idée fixes in his works over the past 20 years.

Huiyu Tan is Senior Lecturer in English at the School of Foreign Studies at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. She teaches and researches intercultural communication education and internationalization and has published in both national and international journals (e.g. Language and Intercultural Communication; Language, Culture and Curriculum).